New Zealand’s Online Casino Gambling Bill 2025 aims to tackle gambling harm in the digital age. But by ignoring esports betting, it risks ignoring a fast-growing and vulnerable audience.
The bill passed its first reading in parliament this month, and it is designed to bring offshore online casino gambling under local control. The bill requires licence applicants to submit harm-minimisation strategies. After that, it gives the Secretary the power to impose regulations, including self‑exclusion, spending limits, and other tools to regulate its usage.
However, the bill focuses narrowly on online casino gambling, leaving out other forms of online wagering, including esports betting, which has exploded in popularity globally in recent years. The esports betting market is expected to grow in revenue to $3 billion by the end of the year, and it continues to give fans a way of interacting with popular esports like League of Legends, Counter-Strike, and Dota 2.
By not explicitly addressing esports betting, the bill misses an opportunity to regulate one of the most at-risk demographics, i.e., a young audience. Esports betting attracts a younger, more digitally native crowd who are often unaware of the risks and less likely to seek help when problems arise.
The bill’s harm prevention and minimisation clause regulations show that the Governor-General could have multiple ways to deal with it. These include setting limits on how much and how often people can bet, mandating self-exclusion procedures and player-set limits, restricting inducements and bonuses, requiring operators to identify and intervene with problem gamblers, and enforcing the use of harm-minimisation technology like player tracking and pre-commitment tools. Extending these mechanisms to esports betting could help protect this vulnerable audience from significant harm.
The country could set a progressive standard for online gambling regulation, but that opportunity could be undermined if young esports bettors continue to fall through the cracks.
