The Real Cost of Betting Through New Zealand’s Sole Legal Sportsbook

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Since 28 June 2025 the racing and sports betting landscape in New Zealand has had one centre of gravity. Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 settled a question the market had been ducking for years: no operator other than TAB NZ may offer racing betting, sports betting, or other racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, irrespective of where that operator is incorporated. The Department of Internal Affairs told providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect. What is left, once the dust settled, is two brands under one roof.

TAB and Betcha are not rivals. They are the two online faces of TAB New Zealand, the state-backed betting operator that runs the totalisator and the fixed-odds book. Both sit behind the same licence. Both share the same customer account and the same safer-gambling tools. The distinction is product positioning: TAB is the established brand carrying racing form, same-race multis and the legacy tote customer; Betcha is the digital-first sister aimed at a younger bettor who wants fixed-odds sport on a phone. Where one will take your bet, the other will too. The question a New Zealand bettor is asking in 2026 is not which site to open — there are really only two, and they sit behind the same operator — but what each of them costs and how the rules written into the bonus terms and the betting rules change what a winning or losing punt actually returns.

That is the angle this page takes. The geographic monopoly is settled. The interesting part is the cost: what a bonus bet really pays out, why the same stake at the same odds leaves you with different amounts depending on the market, what “fixed odds” means when a market has no liquid rival pricing, and how much the bookmaker keeps on every dollar that crosses the slip. Each of those questions has an answer the marketing material does not give you, and that is where this guide does most of its work.

The information below is current as of 30 October 2026 and has been checked against the Racing Industry Act 2020 (as amended in 2025), the Department of Internal Affairs public guidance, and each operator’s own published terms.

What a Bonus Bet Is Worth, and What It Costs to Clear

The welcome offers in this market are written in the language of generosity: bonus cash, matched deposits, promotional wagers. No deposit guarantee and no payout guarantee exist for these offers. The arithmetic behind them is less generous. A reader who clears a $100 bonus at a 5x turnover requirement on minimum odds of 1.50 is committing $500 of betting volume before any withdrawal is possible. That volume is taxed by the margin on every market the bonus is cleared through, and at a margin of around 5% the expected cost of clearing sits near $25, not counting the time and the variance. The bonus pays out only what is left after that cost, and what is left is rarely the headline figure.

The pattern is the same whether the bonus is paid in cash, in free bets, or in “bonus cash” that can be split across multiples. Read the conditions: the wagering factor, the qualifying odds, the deadlines, the list of markets the bonus stake may be placed on, the cap on bonus-derived winnings, and the rule on whether the bonus stake itself is returned with a win. These are where a promotion earns or loses its value.

The shape of a sportsbook offer in New Zealand

TAB NZ’s promotional language centres on Bonus Cash, which the app describes as fund that can be split across multiple bets rather than tied to a single wager. New TAB NZ customers receive Bonus Cash on sign-up, and the app additionally lists a Mega Multi bonus that returns up to $50 in Bonus Cash when a four-leg-or-longer multi misses by a set number of legs. The fine print matters more than the headline figure: terms and conditions apply, and the apps do not publish the wagering factor in the description.

A multi bonus is an insurance product. The bookmaker gives back a portion of the stake when one or more legs of a multi let the bet down. The math is unfavourable by design — a $50 cap on the safety net implies the bookmaker has calculated the average expected loss on the qualifying multi and priced the rebate to come in below it — but it has a real value when one leg of a long-priced multi is the only thing standing between the bettor and a payout. The cap is the cost ceiling. The terms hide the dead-leg allowance and the minimum leg count, both of which decide whether the offer is worth picking up on the next multi you were going to place anyway.

Where the rollover bites

Where the wagering factor and the minimum odds are not stated up front, the only sound move is to check the betting site’s full terms before the bonus is accepted. Two patterns to look for:

• the qualifying odds floor. A 1.50 floor on a single winner means roughly half the markets on a typical sportsbook are excluded. The clearing volume is then concentrated in favourites and in markets with low margins, and the bettor gives up whatever edge they might have had on price.
• the deadline. A seven-day window on a 5x turnover is around $70 of qualifying bets a day at a $10 stake. That is not a weekend treat; it is a routine. A thirty-day window gives breathing room but extends the period over which the bettor’s bank is committed.

A promotion that does not publish its terms in the welcome email is signalling that the terms are unfavourable. Walk away, or budget for the cost.

Sports and Tournaments Covered by the Legal Operator

The TAB NZ fixed-odds book and the TAB NZ tote together cover the sports that matter to a New Zealand punter. Racing carries the deepest coverage, by tradition and by law: thoroughbred, harness (trots), and greyhound racing — though greyhound racing is in the process of winding down from 1 August 2026, after which offshore operators may not take bets on those races either. The published betting rules list Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie and Big6, which is a near-complete tote product set for a New Zealand racing audience.

The sports book is the newer leg of the business. The TAB NZ app carries rugby union and rugby league (covering the All Blacks, Super Rugby Pacific and the NRL), cricket (the Black Caps), the Warriors in the NRL, basketball, tennis, football, American football, baseball, and the Melbourne Cup and other major racedays from Australia. Pre-match and live betting are both listed, with Trackside live race streaming alongside the in-app bet slip on races covered by that service. Trackside is a TAB-owned broadcast, which is why it sits inside the betting app: the licence holder and the broadcaster are the same entity, and the live stream has nowhere else to go.

Same Race Multis and Same Game Multis (an SGM whose legs come from one match) are headline products, alongside one-tap Popular Multis. Place Extra extends a place bet out to tenth in selected races, which is unusually generous by international standards — most books stop at fourth. The form tools built into the TAB NZ app (racing form, Blackbook, Jockey Challenge) are not gimmicks; they are a form of customer retention, since a punter who has built up a Blackbook on the TAB platform is not easily drawn to a competitor that has none of it.

What the market does not cover

The legal New Zealand book does not run a betting exchange. There is no lawful New Zealand spread-betting operation. The Racing Industry Act 2020 reserves the right to offer racing and sports betting to TAB NZ alone, and an exchange or a spread book is likely to fall squarely inside that definition. There is no statutory clarity on whether esports betting counts as “sports betting” under the Act; the safer read is that TAB NZ is the only lawful channel for it, and offshore books (where esports is a major product) sit on the wrong side of section 74AAA even before the offshore question is settled. Bets on politics and novelty markets are not established on TAB NZ either; the temptation to write a marker on an election is the kind of market that ends up on an offshore book, and offshore books are unlawful for New Zealand customers.

Virtual sport — computer-simulated racing and football — is treated by the 2026 online casino law as casino gambling. The dividing line is blurry, and a reader chasing a virtual-market edge needs to look carefully at where each product sits before laying a stake.

How a Sportsbook Bet Actually Works

A sportsbook bet is a contract: the punter pays a stake; the bookmaker promises a return computed from the odds at the moment the bet was struck. The mechanic is the same whether the bet is a single, a multi, or an each-way wager, but the cost and the payout differ in ways the bet slip does not spell out.

Placing a single

A single is one selection on one outcome. The TAB NZ app prices Rugby League matches in decimal form: a price of $2.10 means a $10 stake returns $21 if the selection wins. The decimal price includes the stake; a $10 stake at $2.10 yields $21 back, of which $10 is the original stake and $11 is the profit. The difference between decimal odds of $2.10 and $2.20 is not $0.10 of profit per dollar: it is $1.10 of profit per $10 stake. A reader treating the decimal as a rough multiple of stake is undercounting the take by about ten percent.

How a multi (parlay) is priced

A multi is a bet whose return depends on more than one selection winning. The price is the product of the decimal odds on each leg: two legs at $1.80 and $2.50 multiply to $4.50. A $10 stake on the multi returns $45 if both legs win. The catch is that every additional leg compounds the implied margin. Where a single-event market might carry a margin of 5%, a six-leg multi in which each leg carries 5% compounds a price the book has shaved twice, and the punter’s chance of winning drops sharply while the headline price climbs. A $4.50 multi that looks generous is, in expectation, worth less than two separate singles at the same combined stake.

Same Game Multi and Same Race Multi are the same product with the constraint that every leg draws from one event. The constraint is not cosmetic. SGMs let the bookmaker correlate the legs, and an SGM at $5.00 is rarely the equivalent of a multi built from the same legs priced freely on the exchange — because there is no New Zealand exchange, the comparison is with the price on a major offshore book, and the TAB NZ SGM is consistently the shorter price.

Each way, place, and exotic bets

Each Way splits the stake two ways: one half on the Win market, one half on the Place market. The place terms depend on the field size: the more runners, the deeper the place payout. Place Extra on TAB NZ extends the place market out to tenth in selected races, which compresses the place margin and lengthens the punter’s edge — but the qualifying races are restricted, and the bettor must check that the race in front of them is included.

Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta and First4 are exotic bets on the order of finish. Quinella picks the first two in either order; Exacta picks the first two in order; Trifecta picks the first three in order; First4 picks the first four. The payouts on a Trifecta and a First4 climb steeply because the number of outcomes rises fast — a 12-horse field has 12×11×10×9 = 11,880 First4 combinations — and a $1 First4 stake that returns $20,000 is not a 20,000-to-one shot at the same probability; it is one ticket in a market with thousands of losing tickets behind it. The tote’s dividend is calculated from the pool, not from the bookmaker’s strike price, which is why exotic dividends swing wildly from race to race.

Live betting

The TAB NZ app lists live betting on selected markets. Live betting prices update as the event unfolds; the bookmaker widens the margin to compensate for the informational disadvantage of pricing faster than the market does. In-play margin is not published in most markets, but experienced bettors can infer it by watching how the prices move when steam comes in. The statutory question of whether any in-play market is restricted is not established; the practical reality is that live betting is available on TAB NZ across rugby, cricket and major international football.

The Comparison at a Glance

The table below sets out the brands a New Zealand reader will encounter and how each sits in relation to the law. TAB and Betcha are the same operator behind two brand names; the remaining brands are listed for reference and are not licensed to take bets from people in New Zealand, regardless of what their marketing says.

The status column is the decisive one. A reader in New Zealand who opens an account with any brand below the line is betting with an offshore operator that New Zealand law does not authorise to take their bets. The Department of Internal Affairs has named the consequences for the operator side; on the player side, section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 (as inserted in 2025) says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore betting operator, so no published penalty for the player has been found. The wager itself is not the issue. The unspent balance is. DIA warns that overseas operators may not return credits and may not pay out large wins, and there is no New Zealand complaints route to chase them when they don’t.

TAB and Betcha in context

TAB and Betcha are not ranked against each other on this page. They are the same operator and are to be treated as such. The reason both appear in the comparison is that the user-facing brand matters when a bettor is picking an app: TAB carries the full tote product, the racing form, Blackbook, Trackside streaming, and the Same Race Multi / Quaddie / Big6 suite; Betcha is positioned as a sport-first book with a simplified wallet and a marketing voice aimed at a younger punter. The product difference is real, but it is a difference between two menus at the same restaurant, not a difference between two restaurants.

Offshore brands at a glance

The eight offshore brands in the table run on different licence regimes. Thunderpick and Roobet hold Curaçao licences, which authorise them to take bets internationally but carry no status in New Zealand; Winz holds Anjouan and Tobique licences; BetNinja names a Comoros licence; Glorion, Telbet, FunBet and Alawin name no licence that applies in New Zealand at all. What the comparison cannot show, and a reader needs to know, is that a Curaçao or Anjouan licence is not a New Zealand licence and will not be treated as one by the New Zealand regulator. The point of a licence is the regulator behind it: who refunds an unspent balance, who arbitrates a dispute, and who enforces the safer-gambling rules. None of those functions are provided for New Zealand customers by an offshore licence.

Overview: Why There Is Only One Legal Operator

New Zealand’s betting market is shaped by a single statute. The Racing Industry Act 2020 established TAB NZ as the holder of the exclusive right to offer racing and sports betting to persons in New Zealand, and the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 tightened that exclusivity into a prohibition: section 74AAA, in force from 28 June 2025, makes it an offence for any other person to offer racing betting, sports betting, or other racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, regardless of where the offeror is incorporated. The law does not geo-block offshore websites. It puts liability on the offshore operator that chooses to serve a New Zealand customer anyway.

There is no licence register for bookmakers because there is no licence to apply for. The Department of Internal Affairs is the gambling regulator under the Gambling Act 2003 and the body charged with monitoring compliance with the section 74AAA prohibition. After the amendment took effect, DIA told providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect. Some did. The rest are in breach of the Act and operate at the regulator’s discretion.

Why the law is written this way

The monopoly is a policy choice, not an accident. TAB NZ’s profits are returned to the racing industry, the harness racing code, the greyhound racing code (until it closes), and the wider sport funding system. The Problem Gambling Levy, paid by TAB NZ at 0.74% of gross profit in the period from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028, funds harm prevention and treatment services. The system rests on the proposition that a single licensed operator, with its profits hypothecated to sport and harm minimisation, is a fair deal for the New Zealand punter. The 2025 amendment closed the loophole offshore operators had been using.

The Entain partnership

TAB NZ’s online operation is run by Entain under a 25-year agreement signed in 2023. The partnership gives Entain a 50/50 share of gross profits, with at least $150m a year going to TAB NZ for the first five years of the partnership, and Entain pledged a one-off $100m payment to the racing sector at the start of the deal. Entain brings the technology platform, the trading risk management, and the multi-market product suite that TAB NZ’s retail betting operation might have struggled to build on its own. The split means the racing industry’s funding base is partly tied to how well Entain’s product performs in the New Zealand market — a quieter-than-expected racing calendar cuts both sides of the partnership equally.

The arrangement explains the simultaneous launch of two brands. Betcha is the product of Entain’s consumer playbook: a digital-first sportsbook aimed at a younger demographic, marketed separately from TAB but trading under the same licence and the same wallet. The technical infrastructure is one. The customer-facing brands are two.

What is and is not covered

The 2025 amendment covers racing betting, sports betting, and other racing or sports betting. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026, which licenses online casino gambling from mid-2026 and on which TAB New Zealand holds the right to apply for a casino licence, does not change the betting monopoly: casino and betting are separate permits, and a casino licence does not extend the betting monopoly in either direction. A sports bet placed with an online casino licensed in New Zealand under the 2026 Act remains unlawful under section 74AAA.

Greyhound racing is being phased out from 1 August 2026, at which point the prohibition in section 74AAA extends to greyhound racing bets even from offshore operators. The transition is staged, and the exact date for full closure may move. A reader betting on greyhounds through 2026 is advised to track the Racing Integrity Board’s published schedule, not the betting site.

What offshore operators do — and what they cannot do

Offshore operators accepting New Zealand customers are breaking section 74AAA. New Zealand does not block bookmaker sites at the network level; the breach is in the offer, not the access. The operator side penalty is not stated in the section and no prosecution of an offshore bookmaker has been published; the practical deterrent is the DIA’s withdrawal notice and the reputational risk of being named in a regulator’s list.

On the player side, section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 (inserted in 2025) provides that an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore betting operator in breach of section 74AAA. No published penalty for a player has been found. The point the reader needs to weigh is not a legal threat against the player but the practical one: an unspent balance on an offshore account is at the offshore operator’s discretion, not New Zealand law’s. The Department of Internal Affairs has named this risk in its public guidance.

The Legal Frame Around New Zealand Betting

The regulatory architecture has three tiers. The Gambling Act 2003 sets the broad framework for gambling in New Zealand and creates the Department of Internal Affairs as the regulator; the Racing Industry Act 2020 (as amended in 2025) governs racing and sports betting specifically; the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 governs online casino gambling from 2026 onwards. The three statutes are not duplicates: each covers a different activity, and a breach under one does not automatically fall under the others.

The Department of Internal Affairs

DIA is the regulator that monitors compliance with the section 74AAA prohibition. Its enforcement tools are not spelled out in the Act; the practical mechanism is the public withdrawal notice and the supporting compliance work. A reader who has a question about whether a particular operator is lawful in New Zealand has nowhere else to ask; the Gambling Commission’s role is over casino and class 3 and 4 gambling, not the sports betting monopoly.

The role of the Racing Integrity Board

The Racing Integrity Board oversees the integrity of racing in New Zealand, including the conduct of races and the licensing of racing participants. It does not handle betting disputes — those are TAB NZ’s own terms. A punter with a dispute about the outcome of a race as run must contact TAB NZ directly; the dispute pathway is the operator’s own.

Advertising

The Advertising Standards Authority’s Gambling Advertising Code applies to betting advertisements. The Code requires that ads must not target children (under 14) or young people (14 to under 18), judged by context, appeal and expected audience — where accurate audience data exists, 25% or more young viewers or listeners is treated as significant. Ads must not encourage harm and must be truthful, with terms available for any offer. There is no New Zealand equivalent of a “whistle-to-whistle” ban for betting. Affiliates that promote offshore books to a New Zealand audience sit on the wrong side of the section 74AAA prohibition; how DIA treats a New Zealand-based affiliate that promotes an offshore book is not established in the public guidance.

Tax

For the player: recreational gambling winnings are generally not taxable in New Zealand, and prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is non-taxable. A person who bets as a business is in a different position and is advised to talk to Inland Revenue or an accountant. This is general information, not tax advice.

For the operator: TAB NZ pays the Problem Gambling Levy (0.74% of gross profit from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028). Overseas operators supplying New Zealand residents pay online gambling duty (12% of profits since 1 July 2024, rising to 16% from 1 January 2027). A duty being payable does not make an offer lawful; overseas operators serving New Zealand are still in breach of section 74AAA regardless of what they pay in duty. The point-of-consumption charge on offshore racing and sports bets ceased on 30 June 2026.

What may be bet on, and what may not

TAB NZ may offer racing betting and sports betting under section 74AAA. The list of permitted bet types is published in TAB NZ’s betting rules. The Racing Industry Act 2020 does not enumerate permitted sports; the regulatory approach is permissive within the monopoly. Bets on politics and novelty markets are not established on TAB NZ, and no published statement explains the omission. No statutory per-bet cap was found; any limits on TAB NZ bets are operator-level terms and come from the betting rules.

No lawful New Zealand betting exchange exists. Spread betting is outside TAB NZ’s sports-betting definition. A reader seeking the price-discovery function of an exchange has no lawful channel inside New Zealand. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 treats virtual (computer-simulated) sport as casino gambling, not sports betting; whether esports betting falls under section 74AAA or under the casino framework is not settled in the public guidance.

Player protection

The age for TAB NZ betting is 18. Betting under 18 is an offence under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020. The age for entry to New Zealand land-based casinos is 20; the two thresholds are different and a reader is advised not to merge them. TAB NZ accounts require a verified New Zealand address and ID; the verification is built into the onboarding flow.

TAB NZ’s safer-gambling tools sit inside the app and cover deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. An exclusion applies across both TAB and Betcha brands because they share a wallet. There is no single national online-betting exclusion register; the register that the casino law will require is for online casinos only and does not extend to sports betting. A punt-er who self-excludes from TAB NZ today cannot be confident the exclusion will be honoured by an offshore operator they also hold an account with; the offshore operator is not part of the New Zealand self-exclusion system.

The Problem Gambling Levy funds harm prevention and treatment. The free Gambling Helpline is 0800 654 655, with a text line at 8006. Safer Gambling Aotearoa is the service body that runs the helpline and the wider intervention programmes.

Staying in Control: How TAB NZ’s Tools Work

The safer-gambling tools inside the TAB NZ app are the practical counterpart to the legal monopoly. They are not advisory. They set hard limits on what an account can do, and they apply across both TAB and Betcha because the two brands share a wallet.

Deposit limits

A deposit limit caps the total amount an account can deposit over a defined period — daily, weekly or monthly. The limit is set by the account holder and is binding once confirmed; an increase usually takes effect after a cooling-off period, and a decrease takes effect immediately. The limit applies to deposits, not to betting volume, so a punter who deposits $200 a week and bets it all on the first day of the week hits the deposit limit at $200 and is stopped, regardless of how much they intended to wager. The mechanism is straightforward and effective for budgeted betting; it does not enforce a betting limit.

Time-outs

A time-out is a short, defined break from the account. The TAB NZ app supports time-outs of fixed lengths (typically 24 hours, one week, or one month) in which the account is locked and cannot be used. A time-out is the right tool for a single bad night or a planned abstinence window. It is shorter than self-exclusion and the account reactivates automatically at the end of the period.

Self-exclusion

Self-exclusion is the longer-form version of the same idea. An exclusion can run for six months, a year, or longer, and throughout the exclusion period the account cannot be reactivated by the user; only the regulator-mandated cooling-off and reactivation process applies at the end. A self-excluded punter is advised to be aware that the exclusion covers TAB and Betcha jointly but does not cover offshore operators, and that opening an offshore account in an exclusion is a real temptation for someone whose self-exclusion came from a hard look at their own betting.

What the tools do not do

The tools do not analyse the punter’s activity for harm markers. They do not call a friend or a counsellor. They do not freeze the account on a streak of losses. They are limit-setting tools: deposit, time, access. The Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655, text 8006) and Safer Gambling Aotearoa are the human services that pick up the work the tools cannot do. A punter who has reached the point of needing a conversation is advised to reach the helpline, not adjust a limit.

The Bookmakers at a Glance

The detailed operator write-ups are below. They are written to what each operator’s own published terms state, not what they market, and they keep the reader’s actual cost in view.

TAB

TAB is the established TAB NZ brand. It is one of two online brands of TAB New Zealand, the only provider lawfully offering racing and sports betting to people in New Zealand since section 74AAA took effect on 28 June 2025. There is no licence register for bookmakers because there is only this one lawful provider; the relevant legal authority is the Racing Industry Act 2020 itself. The TAB NZ app carries the full tote product (Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie, Big6), the full fixed-odds sports book on rugby union, rugby league, cricket, football, tennis, basketball, American football, baseball and more, plus Same Race Multis, Same Game Multis, Popular Multis, and Place Extra out to tenth in selected races. The betting app “TAB – Racing & Sports Betting” is published on the New Zealand App Store under the seller name New Zealand Racing Board and was first released on 8 September 2014. The app carries Trackside live race streaming with in-app betting, racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools, and a simplified wallet. New TAB NZ customers receive Bonus Cash that can be split across multiple bets, and a Mega Multi bonus pays up to $50 in Bonus Cash when a four-leg-or-longer multi falls short by a set number of legs (terms and conditions apply).

The bookmaker behind the TAB brand is the same one behind Betcha; what sets TAB apart is the racing product, the form tools and the streaming integration. A racing-first punter has no reason to look elsewhere. A sport-first punter who never bets on racing will find the same fixed-odds sports book on Betcha in a more product-focused shell, but the deeper pricing, the racing form and the Trackside stream all live on TAB.

Betcha

Betcha is the second online brand of TAB New Zealand. It runs under the same section 74AAA authority as TAB, with the same single New Zealand account and wallet behind both products. The brand is positioned as a digital-first sportsbook aimed at a younger bettor who wants fixed-odds sport on a phone and is not interested in the tote or the racing form. The product surface is narrow on purpose: the sportsbook, the multi builder, and a streamlined wallet, with the racing codes accessible through the same login. Same Race Multis and Place Extra are available when racing is in season. Bonus Cash promotions run on the same terms as TAB.

The case for Betcha over TAB is the interface and the brand voice, not the legal or pricing position. A reader who opens Betcha gets the same TAB NZ odds feed, the same safer-gambling tools, the same self-exclusion framework, and the same mega-multi bonus. What is not the same is the friction: Betcha’s deposit and withdrawal flow, and its multi builder, are designed for the sports bettor rather than the racing punter, and the difference is felt in the time taken to place the bet rather than in the price received. For a punter whose betting is 100% sport and who finds TAB’s app cluttered with racing product, Betcha is the better entry point.

Thunderpick

Thunderpick is a Curaçao-licensed crypto esports and sportsbook. The brand is owned and operated by Paloma Media B.V. (company number 146988) under Curaçao Gaming Authority licence number OGL/2024/677/0722. The Curaçao licence authorises Thunderpick to take bets internationally but carries no right to take bets from people in New Zealand, where section 74AAA reserves the right to TAB NZ alone. There is no New Zealand complaints route or harm-minimisation framework that reaches a Thunderpick account; an unspent balance is at the operator’s discretion under Curaçao law.

The product is centred on esports and on crypto rails for deposits and withdrawals. A punter whose betting is significantly esports-weighted may find a wider market selection on Thunderpick than on TAB NZ — but the same legal exposure applies to every bet placed, and the price quoted on the Thunderpick screen sits beside no New Zealand-side cost information. The market selection is the case for the brand; the regulatory gap is the case against.

Roobet

Roobet is a Curaçao-licensed crypto casino and sportsbook. The brand is a trading name of Raw Entertainment B.V. (registration number 157205), registered at Korporaalweg 10, Curacao, under Curaçao licence OGL/2024/687/0427. Like Thunderpick, Roobet has no New Zealand licence and no New Zealand complaints route; a New Zealand-resident account holder has no recourse to the New Zealand regulator if a withdrawal is delayed or refused, and the brand’s own dispute resolution applies under Curaçao law.

Roobet’s product mix leans casino-first, with a sportsbook attached. A punter whose betting is mostly sports will be on the wrong side of the brand’s emphasis, and the marketing weight on casino game weighting will tilt the promotional balance away from sports-bet rollover. The crypto rails and the Curaçao licence are the two features to weigh, in that order. The New Zealand legal position is the third.

Glorion

Glorion is a sportsbook and casino that names no licence applicable in New Zealand. Support is available by live chat and email; the site states that customers must be 18 or over to register. Without a New Zealand licence, a Glorion account held by a New Zealand resident is in the same regulatory gap as the other offshore brands in this list: section 74AAA is breached on the offer side, no New Zealand regulator handles complaints, and unspent balances are exposed.

The product is a standard offshore casino-and-sportsbook package. There is no functional reason for a New Zealand punter to prefer Glorion over TAB NZ except product preference; the legal cost of that preference is the entire reason this guide exists. Glorion is one of the offshore brands a New Zealand reader will encounter, and the comparison row reflects the legal status. The rest of the assessment belongs to the reader.

BetNinja

BetNinja is a casino and sportsbook licensed under the Union of the Comoros. The Comoros licence authorises BetNinja to operate internationally but does not extend to New Zealand; section 74AAA applies, and a New Zealand-resident account holder is in the same position as with any other offshore brand. The product mix is casino-heavy with a sportsbook attached.

The case for BetNinja, where one exists, is the same as for the other offshore brands: a market or a product feature a New Zealand punter cannot find on TAB NZ. Where the offshore product genuinely adds something the legal book does not, the punter must weigh that product against the regulatory cost — and the absence of a New Zealand complaints route and a New Zealand harm-minimisation framework is the entire regulatory cost. BetNinja is in the comparison for completeness.

Telbet

Telbet is a crypto casino and sportsbook. The site describes itself as such on its landing page, with a welcome offer framed around a 200% bonus up to 1 BTC plus 50 free spins and a 5 USDT free bet on the Russian-language version of the site. Telbet names no licence applicable in New Zealand. A New Zealand-resident account holder has no New Zealand regulator oversight and no New Zealand harm-minimisation framework behind the account. The crypto rail and the bonus structure are the marketing pull. The legal exposure is the full offshore-brand cost: section 74AAA breached on the offer side, no New Zealand recourse, balance at operator discretion.

A reader drawn by the headline bonus is advised to read the bonus terms before depositing. A 200% bonus up to 1 BTC is a four-figure headline; the wagering factor, the qualifying odds floor, and the list of games and sports the bonus stake can be played on decide what the bonus is actually worth, and the same calculations in the bonus section above apply. Crypto volatility is a second-order risk on a USDT-denominated free bet; a $5 USDT free bet is worth $5 USDT today and may be worth more or less in NZD by the time the bonus is cleared.

FunBet

FunBet is a sportsbook that lists odds on football, ice hockey, American football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, rugby and baseball, with live betting on a 24/7 bookmaker model. The site names no licence applicable in New Zealand and is in the same regulatory position as the other offshore brands in the list. The product orientation is fixed-odds sport with live betting, which is closer to TAB NZ’s core than the casino-led brands above.

A New Zealand punter comparing FunBet to TAB NZ is comparing an unlicensed offshore book to the only licensed New Zealand book on a product the legal book actually carries. The depth of market on a typical rugby union test match is likely to be shallower on FunBet than on TAB NZ; the live-bet schedule may run deeper. The legal asymmetry is the deciding factor: an offshore book pays no Problem Gambling Levy, has no obligation to honour a self-exclusion request, and is not subject to DIA monitoring. The price quoted on the FunBet screen is the only number the punter can read; the regulatory cost on the other side does not appear on the slip.

Alawin

Alawin is a casino and sportsbook that names no licence applicable in New Zealand. The site states that customers must be 18 or over to register. Without a New Zealand licence, a New Zealand-resident account holder has the same offshore exposure as the other brands in the list. The product mix is casino and sportsbook, with a standard offshore-game weighting.

Alawin is in the comparison because a New Zealand reader will encounter it; the legal analysis is the same as for Glorion, FunBet or any other brand that names no applicable licence. The assessment is that there is no functional reason to register with Alawin instead of TAB NZ unless a specific Alawin market or product feature addresses a gap the legal book leaves open. Where the gap is real, the punter must weigh the gap against the regulatory cost, and that assessment belongs to the punter.

Winz

Winz is a casino and sportsbook holding Anjouan and Tobique licences. The site footer states the licences; both authorisations apply internationally and neither extends to New Zealand. A New Zealand-resident account holder has no New Zealand complaints route or harm-minimisation framework behind the account. The product is a full casino-and-sportsbook under one wallet.

The dual-licence structure (Anjouan plus Tobique) is unusual: most offshore brands name one licence or none. The Tobique Gaming Commission is a newer licensing authority and its enforcement record is shorter than the Curaçao Gaming Authority’s. The practical meaning for a New Zealand punter is that the regulatory backstop on a Winz account is the lesser-tested of the two licences. The product choice on a sportsbook goes to depth of market and live betting; the regulatory cost is the same as the other offshore brands in the list.

The Math Behind the Margin

The bookmaker’s margin is the cut the bookmaker keeps on every dollar that crosses the slip. It is the clearest cost number in the market, and the one the marketing material is least likely to mention. The calculation is straightforward on a two-way market: take the implied probability embedded in each side’s price, add them up, and subtract from 100% to get the margin.

An illustrative two-way market priced at decimal odds of $1.90 on each side implies a probability of about 52.6% on each outcome (1 divided by 1.90). Two such probabilities sum to about 105.3%, and the excess over 100% — roughly 5% — is the bookmaker’s margin. On this illustrative two-way market the margin sits around 5%. The exact figure for any real market depends on the specific prices; a market at $1.85 / $1.85 implies a higher margin, a market at $1.95 / $1.95 implies a lower one, and a longshot-favourite match with prices at $4.50 / $1.30 implies a margin in the same neighbourhood but tilted by the imbalance.

Three things follow from the margin:

• A margin of 5% means the bookmaker keeps about 5 cents of every dollar wagered on that market across a large sample of bets. The punter keeps 95 cents. This is true for every dollar that crosses the slip; it does not mean every punter loses 5% of their stake — variance does the rest, and a punter can be ahead over a session while the market still keeps its 5% on aggregate.
• Markets with more outcomes carry higher margins. A three-way market (win-draw-loss) at roughly even odds sums to more than 100%; a twelve-runner race at Win prices sums to considerably more. The exotics on the tote (Trifecta, First4) carry steeper effective margins because the combinations multiply.
• Margin is invisible in a single price. A price of $2.10 reads the same on a 5% margin as on a 10% margin if the comparison is with one other line; the difference shows up when the line is added to the rest of the market. The price the punter sees is the price they pay; the price that includes the margin is the price the market clears at without the bookmaker’s cut.

A practical use of the margin is in comparing markets. Two bookmakers offering different prices on the same selection is not the only comparison that matters; two bookmakers offering the same price on a market with different margins is a different comparison. The headline price stays flat; the cost on each dollar wagered moves with the margin. A punter betting in volume on the cheaper-margin market gives back less to the bookmaker across the same volume.

The same calculation generalises beyond a two-way market. The formula is: convert each outcome’s decimal odds to an implied probability (1 divided by the odds), sum the implied probabilities across all outcomes of that market, and subtract the sum from 1. The result is the bookmaker’s margin on that market. A sum below 1 is an arbitrage, which a punter can theoretically exploit across bookmakers — but on TAB NZ alone, the market is closed and there is no arb to find.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does sportsbook betting work?

A sportsbook bet is a contract: you pay a stake, and if your selection wins, the bookmaker returns your stake multiplied by the decimal odds at the moment you placed the bet. A $10 stake at decimal odds of $2.50 returns $25 if the selection wins, made up of your original $10 plus $15 of profit. The bookmaker builds a margin into every price, so the implied probability across all outcomes of a market sums to more than 100%, and the excess is the cut the bookmaker keeps.

How do you bet a parlay at a sportsbook?

A parlay — or multi, in TAB NZ’s vocabulary — combines two or more selections into one bet. The decimal odds of each selection are multiplied together to give the price of the multi: two legs at $1.80 and $2.50 produce a multi price of $4.50. All legs must win for the bet to pay out; one losing leg means the stake is lost. Same Game Multis and Same Race Multis are parlays constrained to one event, with correlated legs that the book prices accordingly.

How do you bet on pro football at a sportsbook?

Open a verified New Zealand account with TAB NZ or Betcha, find the football match in the app, and tap the price next to the outcome you want to back. Enter your stake on the bet slip; the slip shows the potential return at decimal odds. Confirm the bet. The bet is settled when the match concludes; live bets settle in play. TAB NZ’s sportsbook covers rugby union, rugby league, football, and the other major codes that New Zealand punters follow.

Which bookmaker may lawfully take sports and racing bets in New Zealand?

TAB NZ, through its two online brands TAB and Betcha. Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, in force since 28 June 2025, prohibits any other person from offering racing betting or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, regardless of where that person is incorporated. There is no licence register for bookmakers because there is no licence to apply for; the only lawful channel is TAB NZ.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

For a single, multiply the stake by the decimal odds to get the total return, then subtract the stake to get the profit. A $20 stake at decimal odds of $3.00 returns $60 in total — your $20 stake plus $40 of profit. For a multi (parlay), multiply the stake by the product of the decimal odds of each leg. Same Game Multis and Same Race Multis use the same multiplication, but with correlated legs from one event.

Published by the Nzbookmakers team.