Under the new rules, New Zealand has banned all gamblings ads 30 minutes before, after and during live sports events.
As New Zealand enters the first stage of licensing online casinos, it introduces new, tighter rules around advertising gambling services.
New Zealanders lose roughly $2.7bn every year to legal gambling, and the government is looking to minimise harm through gambling ads. For sometime, legal sports betting in the market was restricted to TAB, which is operated by global giant Entain.
As such, TAB and Lotto are the only gambling companies allowed to advertise in New Zealand.
However, from 3 July, new stricter regulations came into force on advertising online casinos.
Under the new rules, operators are prohibited from using endorsements, sponsorship, or affiliate marketing to promote their services. Ads encouraging impulsive play or personalised promotions that either suggest increased spend or reference other gambling forms are banned.
Placements of gambling ads will be limited, such as being precluded from front pages in print publications and public transport.
Operators must also avoid appealing to under-18s and reach an audience where over 20% is underage.
Direct marketing will require explicit consent or narrowly tailored account-holder preferences, which will come with mechanisms to control frequency and content.
In addition, New Zealand has banned all gambling ads 30 minutes before, after and during any live sporting broadcast. This is very different than its neighbour Australia, which has banned gambling ads during live sporting events between 6:30am and 8:30pm.
Ad frequency is not restricted in New Zealand’s regulations, except for allowing customers to choose the frequency of communications around direct marketing emails and texts.
As regulations in the country look to move consumers over from black market to legal casinos, the focus remains on safeguarding and harm mitigation.
Regulations in New Zealand are strict, but there is no obligation for ads to display any harm minimisation in ads – which is a growing trend among newly regulated markets for gambling ads.
For example, in Brazil, ads will have to show messages such as: “betting is not an investment,” or “betting makes you lose money,” or “betting can cause addiction.”
