Will new laws work or worsen online gambling risks for young Kiwis?
Saturday, 22 November 2025
Tom started gambling when he was 15.
Shiny, colourful advertisements that looked like video games popped up in every corner of the internet he looked.
His older brother did it. YouTubers and musicians he loved did it. It was all over his social media feeds. So why wouldn't he?
Despite being under age, Tom – his name has been changed to protect his identity – could make an account, pour in money from his part-time job. But he couldn't withdraw a cent.
He’ll never forget the moment he lost $300 within seconds.
“I wanted to be like [the influencers and my brother] and try ‘[to] chase the win,” said Tom, now 21.
“But I just kept losing and chucking money into this fire pit.”
Six years later, the university student is still at it. He has wagered more than $10,000 in the past year alone, mostly on online blackjack and sports betting while drinking with flatmates.
Despite the losses, the anxiety, the mornings waking up realising he has blown a day’s wages in minutes, Tom still gambles. He’s convinced he’s breaking even because he’s “lucky”. And he’s not alone in being hooked.
Online gambling has become deeply embedded in the lives of young New Zealanders, normalised through relentless social media promotion, easy illegal access for teenagers, and a culture in which watching sport means placing bets.
As the Government prepares to licence up to 15 online casino operators for the first time next year, advocates warn that if rules are not tightly enforced, harm will only increase.
The legal grey area
Under the Gambling Act 2003, it is illegal to operate online casinos in New Zealand.
The act prohibits “remote interactive gambling” – betting via computers or phones. The only legal remote gambling in NZ is through Lotto, TAB and licensed class 3 lotteries, like charity raffles run by organisations such as the Coastguard or Heart Foundation.
But thousands of offshore casino sites like Stake and Rainbet – companies based in the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao– operate anyway, as it is not illegal for someone in New Zealand to participate in gambling over the internet if that website is based overseas.
What is illegal is the promotion or advertising of these overseas sites in New Zealand, currently carrying maximum fines of $10,000.
Despite this, advertisements seem pretty much everywhere.
Tom said “every other scroll” on his social media is online gambling promotion.
‘Broke the table – let’s gamble it back’
Both issues – relentless illegal promotion of online casinos and young Kiwis gambling habits – came to light in Dunedin, as university students in balaclavas candidly shared their story with journalist Paddy Gower.
The men disclosed how offshore online casinos approached them to advertise their sites through social media accounts, offering them up to $85 for a 30-second video on platforms like Instagram to promote gambling.
Such deals have gone beyond the Otago coastline.
A Christchurch-based Instagram account showed similar content – young people in living rooms with beers, TVs streaming “feature” wins of upwards of $7000, and large groups of young men gambling on laptops in the University of Canterbury library and study rooms.
The account stopped posting after the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) began clamping down on advertising earlier this year.
The videos followed a pattern: flatmates would joke about broken furniture or mess from parties – “broke the table last night, let’s pay for it on Rainbet” – then film themselves gambling to supposedly cover the damage.
It made gambling look fun, social, and consequence-free – “boy math”, Tom called it.
But even in situations outside of socialising, the influence slid in. On one occasion when Tom missed his bus, he gambled to try to recoup the cost of an Uber home rather than waiting for the next one.
“I just did it since it was a thing on Instagram to gamble the cost of a potential debt.”
Regulators need teeth to tackle “predatory” behaviour
Andree Froude, advocacy and communications director at the Problem Gambling Foundation, called the offshore casino behaviour predatory, and said the regulators need to have teeth.
During the crackdown, the DIA fined four influencers a collective $125,000 for promoting unlicensed casinos.
The problem? When offshore operators reportedly offer influencers between $50,000 and $500,000 per post, a $10,000 fine is pocket change.
“Penalties need to be much, much tougher, so that it really does send a clear signal – not necessarily to the influencers, but to the operators who are doing this,” Froude said.
Young men are particularly vulnerable, she said, as the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain which regulates impulsivity and decision-making – develops later in males.
Combined with early exposure through gaming features like loot boxes, constant advertising targeting men aged 18-29, and the apparent social aspect of gambling with mates, Froude said there are a “lot of factors that … put them into a high-risk category”.
‘Electric’: The $3000 rush
Ben, also not his real name, got a TAB account the day he turned 18. But Instagram introduced him to something different: “features”.
On a traditional pokie machine, players spin repeatedly in an attempt to trigger a bonus feature – the round that pays out. Online casinos let you skip straight there and buy the feature outright.
Instant risk, instant reward.
Soon Ben and his flatmates were chipping in during drinking sessions – $10 or $20 each – pooling money to buy features on offshore casino sites. One night they put in $60. The feature paid $3000. They split $600 each.
“It was f…ing nuts. The feeling was electric,” said Ben, now 22.
For many young men, gambling isn’t solitary addiction – it’s social currency.
“It’s big in New Zealand culture – get a box of beers, watch the rugby, make a bet,” said 21-year-old Sam, whose name has also been changed. “Plus it’s all over social media. When you see other people putting money towards it, it makes you feel like you have to do the same.”
The regulatory bet
In an attempt to regulate the country’s online casino market, the Government introduced the Online Casino Gambling Bill earlier this year, which will license up to 15 offshore casino operators to “make [online gambling] safer for those who wish to do so,” Acting Internal Affairs Minister David Seymour said.
The licences will be available via an auction, and the move is expected to raise $200 million for the Government.
Expected to become law early next year, Seymour said the bill addresses risks currently faced by underage people such as Tom who can access unregulated sites with no age verification or harm minimisation standards.
“In order to secure a licence, providers will have to meet strict entry criteria and comply with safety requirements, including, importantly, age-verification,” Seymour said.
The bill also proposes increasing penalties for illegal advertising to $300,000 for individuals and $5m for companies, up from the current $10,000.
While Seymour said the Government is working on regulations and safeguards to ensure that gambling advertisements are compliant with the law, promotion by influencers is still under deliberation.
But the Problem Gambling Foundation wants advertisements banned entirely.
“[Advertising] is already so loose and permissive at the moment,” Froude said.
“We have to be able to prevent harm to New Zealanders who gamble on these sites. And we are really, really concerned that [the bill] is actually going to increase harm.”
Currently, the bill permits advertising and leaves critical protections to regulations that will be decided later, Froude said, meaning they're not guaranteed.
The foundation wants these protections written into the primary legislation – a national self-exclusion platform, under which problem gamblers can ban themselves from all licensed sites at once; mandatory pre-commitment limits, where gamblers must set spending and time limits before they start playing; credit card bans, to stop people gambling with borrowed money; and a complete ban on gambling advertising.
“The devil will be in the detail,” Froude said.
“Licensing [offshore online casinos] and putting guard rails up is a good thing, but we need to make sure that the harm minimisation measures are really, really robust, and that advertising is tightly controlled.”