Gambling authority

Estimates show that around one million New Zealanders gamble online. That number has been rising for years. However, few will be aware of the role that the gambling authority plays in the field of online gambling. The Gambling Authority is the organization that oversees all gambling traffic in New Zealand.

This authority ensures that all games of chance in New Zealand are conducted fairly, that the lotteries organized in New Zealand adhere to strict rules. The KSA also regulates how municipalities should deal with associations that organize lotteries themselves. Until recently, the Gambling Authority was also responsible for inhibiting the growth of online gambling in New Zealand.

Law of 1964

Although other countries had adapted to modern times by establishing rules for online casinos and online gambling, New Zealand used a gambling law dating back to 1964. As you may understand, there was nothing in that law about online gambling at all. In fact, in New Zealand it was it was illegal to gamble online .

In practice, however, those 1,000,000 New Zealanders who are now online were indeed gambling. This was mainly due to the fact that the Gambling Authority had hardly any opportunities to address this offer. Other countries made arrangements for online casinos and licenses for it online games of chance , but New Zealand had no law that could provide for this. In addition, because the government decided that it did not want to block websites, in practice there was a strange gray area in which there was a lot of gambling, but there was no real legal offer.

New law

That is about to change after the government adopted a new law has passed . Behind the scenes, the Gambling Authority has been working hard to a gambling license for online providers, which is now being filled in further. That means online casinos can apply for a license to offer their services explicitly in New Zealand. That license includes all sorts of rules that casinos must adhere to, so that New Zealanders can not only legally, but also safely and reliably gamble online.

Player protection

The New Zealand Gaming Authority will focus its future policy primarily on the psychological protection of players – even more than is the case in other countries. This policy can also be seen when it comes to the offline side of gambling. For example, the Gaming Authority is particularly strict when it comes to offering games of chance to young people (a group that is statistically vulnerable anyway). In particular, the issue of ‘loot boxes’ came into the news, with the Gaming Authority accusing game developers of making young people gamble by offering them these ‘loot boxes’.

At the moment, attention is focused on the recently opened online casino games : players use real money to buy chips. Then you can play on video slots, or join the blackjack or roulette table. Payment in real money is of course not possible, but we expect that the KSA is not happy with this development. The GTA casino is now, just a few days after launch, already blocked in 50 countries.

Countering illegal offers

The new law on gambling also ensures that the Gambling Authority has more opportunities to counteract the illegal offer of online casinos. These possibilities were technically always there, but because the government always preferred free internet traffic over enforcement of the illegal offer of online casinos, the Gaming Authority had no real ways to combat this offer.

In practice, the Gambling Authority therefore focused on websites that were very explicitly aimed at New Zealanders. As a result, it was sometimes difficult for New Zealand players to gamble online. After all, casinos ran the risk of large fines the moment they offered iDEAL or put New Zealand texts on their websites.

Legal offer online gambling

The government hopes that by offering online casinos that have been approved by the Gambling Authority, the illegal offer will be reduced a lot. Of course, it is frustrating not to be able to use from iDeal or to be able to get support in English only. For players, the legal offer will therefore be a lot more attractive, although players must take into account special conditions for casinos that are imposed by the Gambling Authority.

Such a special condition is, for example, that players can not use anonymous payment options . Many international casinos offer the option of using a prepaid debit card to top up a player's balance; in New Zealand that will not be an option. Incidentally, it is never possible to withdraw winnings from an online casino anonymously, casinos always need personal data to prevent money laundering.

Another special rule is that there will be a central register in which all players of all forms of gambling are recorded. For example, someone who occasionally go to Royal Vegas Casino , but further online gambling is registered in one place. In this way, the government hopes to risks of gambling addiction to counteract and prevent a risk player from getting out of the picture by gambling online.

Remote gambling law

Although the new law (officially the Remote Gaming Act) was created by the government, the Gaming Authority itself also has a lot of room to give substance to that law. The law sometimes specifically leaves room for administrative measures, which must be completed by the Ministry of justice and the Gaming Authority.

Tax on gambling

One of the big changes in the law is that players do not have to pay more tax on their winnings themselves; this gambling tax is automatically withheld by the provider of the game. This already applied to forms of online gambling that were legal (the Toto and lotto games of the New Zealand lotteries), but also applies to holders of a future online casino license. Players who decide to gamble with a non-legal provider must pay their own gambling tax.