Eleven companies have won the right to apply for New Zealand’s first online casino licences after a two-week government auction that drove the price of each licence to $15 million. The Department of Internal Affairs published the results on Tuesday, a day after the auction closed, and the list mixes a local casino operator, the TAB, and some of the biggest names in global online gambling.
The auction ran from 29 September to 12 October and attracted 32 bidders. The department says it took ten rounds to settle, with the price rising each round until the number of bidders still willing to pay matched the 15 licences on offer. If all 15 are taken up and granted, the Crown stands to collect $225 million in licence fees before GST.
The biggest winner was Baytree Interactive Limited, which secured three rights to apply, the maximum any one group is allowed under the new law. Trade publications including iGaming Business identify Baytree as part of Super Group, the owner of the Betway brand. Playvia Gaming (NZ) Limited, a subsidiary of the British bookmaker Entain, and Rock Swift Group Limited each took two. The remaining eight entities took one each. They are Christchurch Online NZ Limited, One Casino Limited, Rush Entertainment Limited, Skill On Net Limited, SkyCity NZ Online NO1 Limited, SkyCity NZ Online NO2 Limited, Stake New Zealand Limited and TAB New Zealand.
SkyCity Entertainment Group, the only New Zealand listed company on the list, confirmed in a market release on Tuesday that it will proceed with applications for two licences at $15 million each, excluding GST. Chief executive Jason Walbridge said the company was “excited to have been successful in the auction to apply for two licences” and was “taking the next step towards entering the online casino gambling market in New Zealand”. He added that “we know New Zealanders trust the SkyCity brand” and that the company would combine that trust with its knowledge of the local market to build an online business.
The $30 million outlay comes at a lean time for SkyCity. The company proposed cutting about 200 roles in August as customers reined in spending, and in July it struck a conditional deal to sell its Grand hotel in Auckland. An online casino gives it a way to reach customers who never walk through the doors of its Auckland, Hamilton or Queenstown properties.
Entain is the other group with a strong local footprint. As well as its two Playvia rights, it runs TAB New Zealand’s betting operation under a 25-year partnership signed in 2023, and the TAB secured a right to apply in its own name. An Entain spokesperson told NEXT.io the company was “pleased to have successfully progressed to the final licence application stage” with “a comprehensive application and due diligence process still to come”. Stake, the Australian-founded brand that began as a cryptocurrency casino and has grown into one of the world’s largest online gambling brands, also made the cut. A Stake spokesperson told iGaming Business the market was “a strong fit for Stake and another important step in growing our presence globally”.
Winning at auction does not mean a licence is in hand. The department is blunt on that point. “Successful participation in the auction does not guarantee that a licence will be granted,” its guidance says, and every winner must now pay the auction price and lodge a full application. Applications open this month and must include a business plan along with strategies for advertising, consumer protection, harm prevention and compliance. The department does not intend to publish the brands each operator plans to use until licences are actually granted, at which point they will appear on a public register.
Each licence covers a single brand and runs for up to three years, with the option of a five-year renewal. No entity can hold more than three. The department expects to begin issuing licences in early 2027 and for the licensed market to be fully operating during that year.
For the offshore casino sites that currently take bets from New Zealanders, the clock is now running. From 1 December any operator that has not lodged a licence application must stop offering online casino gambling here. Those with an application in the queue may keep operating while it is assessed, but they cannot advertise, and if the application is declined they must leave the market. The exemption ends on 1 June 2027. Unlicensed operators that keep going face fines of up to $5 million under the Online Casino Gambling Act, which passed its third reading in April and came into force on 1 May.
The outcome broadly matches what Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden predicted when the auction model was announced. “We don’t have a huge online gambling market, so I would expect that it’s mainly offshore providers,” she told RNZ in March 2025. At the time she also played down the tax windfall, suggesting the Crown might gain only about $13 million a year extra in the early years, well short of the $179 million a year National had claimed a 12 per cent gambling duty would raise. The $225 million in one-off licence fees now sits on top of whatever duty the licensed operators pay once they are trading.
The size of the market has always been the awkward question. A June 2024 departmental briefing, reported by RNZ in March 2025, put offshore online casino revenue from New Zealanders at a minimum of $304 million a year and warned that licensing and advertising “could have the unintended effect of encouraging more gambling”. The Problem Gambling Foundation’s Andree Froude said then that “we had thought around five, but to have 15 new players in the market is really concerning”. That the auction cleared at $15 million a licence, with 32 bidders chasing 15 spots, suggests the industry sees considerably more than $304 million on the table.
Whether the bidders have paid too much is now their problem. They have handed the Government a list of names, a firm price and a December deadline that will push every unlicensed site out of the country or into the application queue. The next test is how many of the 11 survive the assessment and which brands New Zealanders see advertised when the market opens next year.
Do you think auctioning online casino licences is the right way to bring offshore gambling under New Zealand rules, or should the Government have stayed out of it altogether? Share your view in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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