Law changes are underway to allow 15 online gambling companies to legally operate in the country from February next year, including allowing advertising. Photo: RNZ / Alex Robertson
The Problem Gambling Foundation fears the details we don't know when it comes to licensing online casinos will be the devil that trips up addicts
New Zealanders gamble away billions of dollars annually.
Now they don't even have to slide into a pub and sit in front of the pokies - they can tap into online sites and lose money from the comfort of their homes. All but two of those sites - Lotto and the TAB - are unlicensed and run from overseas.
Even the Auckland and Christchurch casinos run their sites from Malta.
They are not illegal, but they are not licensed here so it is illegal for them to advertise to Kiwi punters.
Law changes are in the wind. They won't block international organisations from operating in New Zealand, but they will allow 15 licensed operators to legally operate in the country from February next year, including allowing advertising.
The aim of Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden's amendment to the 2003 Gambling Act is to harness tax revenue and gain some measure of harm-mitigation.
In the 2022/2023 financial year Kiwis collectively lost $2.76 billion to gambling, and Andree Froude from the Problem Gambling Foundation said with the way the industry was evolving, that figure is only going to increase.
"People are just being bombarded by gambling advertisements, so that tends to normalise gambling and make it seem like it's just a normal activity or a normal part of life," she said.
Van Velden announced the online gambling bill at the end of last year. Its purpose is "to regulate online casino gambling to facilitate a safer and compliant regulated online gambling market", she said. In a statement she said that, more importantly, it will prevent and minimise online gambling harm and limit opportunities for crime and dishonesty.
Limited online options here have led to a boom in New Zealanders who participate in offshore online gambling, Froude said.
"Although we haven't got any hard data around it, we do know from bank transaction data that people are gambling on these offshore sites."
She said gambling on these sites does come with added risk, which is why the government is looking to increase the number of licensed casinos.
That would give companies SkyCity and Christchurch Casino the opportunity to move their business back to New Zealand.
They were operating offshore "essentially to get around our law because they've been waiting for this regulation to happen", Froude said.
However, it's unclear whether either company will be successful in obtaining one of these licences. Van Velden has made it clear that New Zealand companies will not get preferential treatment over international ones.
"I have considered whether or not it should be domestic priority or offshore priority. I think it's fair just to allow anybody to bid for one of the licenses, rather than try and say, just because you're here and you've been established for years in New Zealand, you're necessarily a better operator," she told RNZ in March.
The bill will also be tougher on the rule breakers, with the penalty for unlicensed offshore businesses caught advertising in New Zealand increasing to $5 million.
But the penalty for individuals who promote offshore gambling sites will remain capped at $10,000, which Froude believes is not enough.
"If they're promoting overseas gambling illegally then the fine should be much bigger than what it currently is ... we just need to set a benchmark because promoting overseas gambling, even though it is prohibited, we've just seen so much of it," she said.
A popular method for offshore companies is to use Kiwi influencers to promote their games on social media. This is illegal and the Department of Internal Affairs is cracking down on users involved in this. Many of them have been issued formal warning letters, and one influencer, Millie Elder-Holmes, has been fined $5000 for repeatedly promoting online gambling despite repeated warnings from the department to stop.
Ultimately Froude said the goal is for the number of Kiwis who gamble to go down. But with these new changes, she's expecting usage to increase.
"Because it's new to New Zealand, it's licensed in New Zealand. We just want to make sure that the harm minimisation measures, and the host responsibility measures are absolutely robust," she says.
There are several measures Froude said the Problem Gambling foundation would like to see mandated in this bill.
"We'd like to see mandatory pre-commitment, so somebody pre-determines the amount of money and the amount of time they're going to spend gambling. We would like to see credit cards being banned because people gambling with credit is really risky.
"So there's lots of things that we want to see happen to make sure that we do get this right because we have concerns around [the bill] despite that. And there's lots we don't know, the devil will be in the detail with some of this."
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