New Zealand online gambling advertisements: no sports betting, prediction markets, slot jackpots or references to “luck”
Authorities in New Zealand have published the legislative guidance on “Online Casino Gambling: Advertising and Marketing,” including prohibiting references to luck, sports betting and prediction market-style betting on events.
The guidance, published by New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs, comes ahead of licensed operators going live in December of this year, after legislation came into effect on 1 May.
While the new legislation allows online casino gambling, and the advertisement of such, it does not change the monopoly on sports betting, operated by TAB, nor does it open the door for prediction markets, which the nation has deemed illegal gambling.
Cementing this in the advertising rules, the department highlighted that it is “unlawful to publish an advertisement that advertises … any form of gambling that is not online casino gambling.”
The group further specifies that it’s unlawful to advertise “betting, paying, or staking consideration on the outcome of a physical sporting event (whether or not held in New Zealand),” and “betting, paying, or staking consideration on the outcome of a novelty event,” such as those offered by prediction markets.
The advertising regulation also “specifically prohibits the advertisement of slot game jackpots,” however, “advertising jackpots for other games (e.g. table games) is permitted.”
The regulations further indicate that it is prohibited “the use of audio and visual representations of physical gaming machines and poker chips in advertisements,” however “images associated with gaming machines (e.g. reels, slots, or levers) that do not depict a physical gaming machine, online slot games, or images depicting the game itself, are not prohibited by this regulation.”
Another interesting element of the online gambling advertising rules is that “references to luck, fate, signs, omens, lucky numbers, lucky colors, or similar concepts should not be used in a way that suggests they can affect gambling outcomes.”
The regulations also note that “advertisements must not imply that gambling improves or is a necessary part of a person’s life in any way,” and that “operators must ensure claims are specific, accurate, and capable of being substantiated,” noting specifically that “any advertisement reasonably likely to promote excessive, continuous, or impulsive gambling is prohibited.”
In regards to celebrity endorsement, the regulations note that “prohibited personal endorsements include the use of a real, fictional, or artificially generated person in a way that would a way that would reasonably lead a person to believe that the person supports, approves of, recommends, or gives credibility to an operator or gambling platform.” This is quite specific in that “this does not require the person to state that they use the operator or platform.”
The rules further detail that no persons under the age of 18 can be targeted or exposed to gaming advertisements, including “the selection of marketing channels, the use of characters, colors, imagery, design and layout, music, and any other elements that may reasonably be expected to attract the attention or interest of minors.”
Advertisement can also not be “placed in locations, distributed through channels, or broadcast during programming where it is reasonably likely that they may attract an audience where more than 20% of the audience are persons under 18 years of age.” This includes advertising near schools or youth-related events, on social media platforms that are significantly used by individuals under 18, “advertising within online games or gaming platforms popular with persons under the age of 18 years,” and “advertising through livestreaming platforms, video-sharing platforms, or channels that have a substantial under-18 audience.”
New Zealand’s online gaming operators are expected to go live in December.
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The Backstory
Advertising rules draw the market’s boundaries
New Zealand’s new online casino advertising guidance is the latest step in a tightly controlled shift from a largely offshore digital gambling environment to a licensed domestic market. The rules do more than set marketing standards. They define what the government wants the new sector to be: online casino gambling, separated from sports betting, prediction markets and broader forms of wagering that remain outside the licensing framework.
The Department of Internal Affairs’ guidance follows the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 coming into force May 1, with licensed operators expected to go live in December. The law allows online casino gambling and advertising for licensed services, but it does not disturb TAB’s monopoly over sports and racing betting. It also does not legalize event-based prediction markets. By barring ads that promote sports betting, novelty-event betting or anything other than online casino products, officials are trying to prevent the new regime from becoming a back door for wider online wagering.
That distinction matters because New Zealand is moving from prohibition and enforcement toward selective legalization. The government has said a licensed market can bring offshore activity under domestic oversight, improve consumer protections and generate tax revenue. But the advertising guidance shows regulators are wary that legalization could also normalize gambling, blur product lines and expose minors or vulnerable customers to aggressive marketing.
A licensing race shaped by offshore competition
The structure of the new market has been contested since the government confirmed it would issue up to 15 online casino licenses. Each license applies to a platform or brand, with operators limited to three licenses. The licenses run for three years, with one optional renewal of up to five years. Existing offshore operators may continue under transitional arrangements until Dec. 1, after which only licensed operators will be allowed to serve New Zealand customers.
Those settings have already prompted positioning by major gambling companies. Entain, which operates TAB’s online sports and racing betting services, has reorganized its local management ahead of the market opening. The company appointed Chris Haigh to lead its New Zealand operation, a move it framed as preparation for “unique challenges and strengths” in the country. The shift reflects the importance of a market in which Entain already has a major regulated footprint through TAB and now plans to bid for online casino licenses. As Entain’s New Zealand leadership revamp showed, incumbent operators are treating the casino licensing process as a major strategic opening.
The advertising rules will affect that race. Operators seeking licenses will not be able to rely on common online gambling marketing tactics, such as jackpot-focused slot promotions, claims tied to luck or imagery that evokes physical gaming machines. Celebrity-style endorsements are also tightly limited, including synthetic or fictional personalities if they appear to give credibility to a platform. Those constraints may favor companies with strong compliance functions and established local brands, while raising the cost of customer acquisition for offshore groups entering the market.
Incumbents pushed for a smaller field
The government’s decision to allow as many as 15 licenses drew criticism from domestic gambling operators, which argued that a broad licensing system could hand too much of the market to multinational companies. SkyCity Entertainment Group, which runs three casinos in New Zealand and one in Australia, urged the government to cap online casino licenses at five and restrict them to local firms. TAB separately argued for no more than five to seven licenses.
Those arguments reflected commercial and policy concerns. SkyCity said limiting licenses to New Zealand-incorporated companies would help ensure profits were subject to domestic income tax. TAB warned that an open market could threaten the economics that support racing and sport, especially if online casino products cannibalized existing wagering activity. The debate, outlined in SkyCity’s push to limit online gaming licenses, showed how legalization created a fight not only over consumer protection, but also over who captures value from a newly regulated industry.
Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden resisted those calls, saying the government’s role was to create a fair regulated market rather than protect incumbent firms. She also warned that favoring local operators could conflict with New Zealand’s free trade obligations. That position helped preserve an open bidding process, but it also increased the importance of downstream controls. If foreign and domestic operators can compete for licenses, advertising restrictions become a key mechanism for shaping conduct once the market opens.
Scams and illegal gambling created pressure to act
The policy shift has been driven in part by the reality that online gambling has continued despite the absence of licensed online casinos. Offshore platforms have accepted New Zealand customers, while social media and digital payment tools have made illegal schemes easier to scale. Supporters of regulation argue that prohibition without a viable licensed alternative leaves consumers exposed to operators that are difficult to police.
Recent enforcement cases have strengthened that argument. Authorities sentenced the owner and director of what they described as the country’s largest illegal lottery, a NZ$11 million-a-year operation that attracted about 70,000 participants and sold more than 287,000 entries. The case, the Department of Internal Affairs’ first prosecution of an illegal online lottery, involved prizes such as cars, boats, caravans, cash and a freehold house. The sentencing of New Zealand’s largest illegal lottery operator underscored how online channels can turn unlicensed gambling into large-scale consumer-facing businesses.
At the same time, public health groups have warned that online casino scams are targeting specific communities. Hāpai te Hauora Māori Public Health said fake profiles using images of people with moko kauae were being used to lure Māori customers to offshore gambling sites or possible credit card scams. The group’s concerns, detailed in warnings over online casino scams targeting Māori people, cut against a simple pro-regulation narrative. For opponents, licensing does not guarantee ethical behavior. For policymakers, the same examples support bringing activity inside a system where advertising, identity checks and operator conduct can be supervised.
Prediction markets remain outside the perimeter
The advertising guidance also reflects a separate regulatory concern: the rise of prediction markets. Platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi let users stake money on the outcomes of events, including politics, economics and sports-adjacent developments. Their growth has challenged regulators globally because they often present themselves as information markets rather than gambling operators.
New Zealand has taken a clear position. The Department of Internal Affairs has said platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket are gambling under domestic law and are not authorized to offer their products to people in the country. That stance, reported in the regulator’s ruling that Polymarket and Kalshi are illegal, aligns with the new advertising rules, which prohibit promotion of betting on novelty events. The Financial Markets Authority has indicated some products could also raise questions under financial markets law, but that would not necessarily remove them from gambling controls.
By explicitly excluding prediction-style betting from online casino advertising, regulators are trying to prevent licensed casino brands from using the new regime to promote adjacent products. The same applies to sports betting, which remains reserved for TAB. The result is a narrow legalization model: online casino games may enter the regulated market, but only within boundaries designed to protect existing monopolies, limit product expansion and reduce consumer confusion.
The stakes shift from access to conduct
New Zealand’s next phase will test whether a licensed online casino market can displace offshore gambling without intensifying harm. The advertising rules suggest the government expects marketing to be one of the main battlegrounds. Operators will need to attract customers away from unlicensed sites while avoiding claims, imagery and targeting practices that regulators view as risky.
For consumers, the promise is a market with clearer accountability, domestic oversight and limits on misleading promotions. For operators, the opportunity comes with unusually prescriptive rules on how gambling can be presented. For public health advocates, the concern is that legalization and advertising, even tightly regulated, may expand participation.
That tension runs through the entire reform. The government is not opening the door to all online gambling. It is creating a licensed casino channel in an environment where illegal lotteries, offshore casinos, scams and prediction markets have already tested the old law’s reach. The new advertising regime is meant to ensure that when the legal market opens, the message to customers is controlled as carefully as the licenses themselves.
