Seven months ago New Zealand had no appetite for Australian-style restrictions on sports betting ads. Now both Labour and National are open to a ban, with Labour racing spokesperson Tangi Utikere saying the party will act “when we win the election”. The political argument is close to settled. The commercial one has barely started.
The tell came from Christopher Luxon. Asked about an ad ban, the National leader raised concerns about grassroots sport funding. He is right to worry, and so should every club treasurer, racing code and broadcaster sales team in the country. Nobody has published a costed replacement.
From “not for now” to odds-on in one campaign
In April 2026, the NZ Herald reported that New Zealand had no plans to follow Australia. At the time, Advertising Standards Authority chief executive Hilary Souter said the ASA’s job was to regulate how ads are run, under a code requiring them to be socially responsible and not aimed at minors.
That complaints-based model has since lost its political cover. At an October youth forum, Problem Gambling Foundation chief executive Melissa Thompson said existing rules “don’t go far enough because they don’t address volume or frequency”. Greens, NZ First and National candidates agreed ads shouldn’t target under-18s, and the Greens committed to banning online gambling advertising outright. The 2026 NZ Gambling Survey found 44% of 15-24 year olds gambled in the past year, with 26,000 rated moderate-to-high risk.
The public health case is real. Parliament’s Petitions Committee concluded in 2025 that current settings were “inadequate”, but the same report flagged that a prohibition would likely reduce funding for community groups, racing and sport. That caveat is the part the campaign skipped.
Australia shows how big the cheque gets
Across the Tasman, Labor’s reforms took effect in January 2026, capping TV ads and restricting sponsorships and athlete endorsements. Yet gambling money remains deeply embedded. A FARE report found every NRL club and five AFL clubs carry gambling sponsors, worth roughly $50 million a year to the NRL and $30-40 million to the AFL. Independent senator David Pocock is already pushing for a full ban.
The lesson for New Zealand businesses is that a first move rarely stays the final one. Whatever emerges here will be the opening bid, and sponsors, broadcasters and codes should plan for tighter rules to follow.
The bigger leak isn’t the advertising
Here is what the ad debate misses. New Zealand sport’s real exposure runs through pokie trusts and wagering, not shirt sponsors.
Sport NZ reported that Class 4 gaming returned $165 million to play, recreation and sport in 2024, with applications running at double the money available. In 2025 it warned that, under worst-case NZIER modelling, sport could lose up to $43.3 million a year by 2029 as gamblers shift “to online casinos that provide no community grants”.
That shift is now law. The new regime lets up to 15 offshore online casinos be licensed, with harm-prevention and advertising rules attached, but the community-return model that props up Saturday sport has no equivalent. An ad ban does nothing to plug that hole. If anything, tighter rules on TAB-style operators while offshore casinos compete for the same wallets could accelerate it.
Racing is the clearest case of dependency. Harness Racing New Zealand’s 2024/25 report showed revenue of $62.7 million, slightly under budget because of lower TAB profit and duty funding, even as wagering turnover grew 9.7%. The code’s finances sit on top of the TAB NZ and Entain partnership and its guaranteed minimum funding. Restrict how that partner markets, and the guarantee’s next negotiation looks very different.
Who should be pricing this now
Broadcasters selling live sport inventory, clubs with betting sponsors, racing codes and the trusts that fund community sport all face policy risk with no transition plan attached. A sensible reform would pair any ad restriction with a mandatory contribution from licensed online operators to a community fund, so the money follows the gambling rather than vanishing offshore. That is a market-design fix, not a new bureaucracy, and it puts the cost on the businesses profiting from the expansion rather than on ratepayers or the Crown.
The parties have agreed on the easy part. Whoever forms the next government will own the harder question of who pays for the jerseys, the turf and the stakes once the ads go. Sport should demand an answer before the legislation is drafted, not after the sponsorship money has already left.
Sources
- Newsroom: Next government odds-on to ban gambling ads in sport (2026-11-03)
- NZ Herald: New Zealand not planning Australia-style sports gambling ads restrictions for now (2026-04-08)
- RNZ: Young people call on politicians for more online gambling restrictions (2026-10-02)
- RNZ: Alcohol and gambling advertising ‘deeply embedded’ in NRL and AFL – report (2026-08-07)
- Sport NZ: Navigating Funding Uncertainty in Play, Active Recreation and Sport (2025)
- Harness Racing New Zealand Annual Report 2024/25 (2025)
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