Sports betting odds in New Zealand — the real cost of every price under the TAB NZ monopoly

Updated October 2026

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Every sports bet has three numbers attached to it: the stake, the odds and what comes back when the bet wins. Two of those are the punter’s choice; the third is decided inside every price the bookmaker publishes, even when it never appears in the headline. New Zealand in 2026 runs that market through a single lawful provider, so the question “how do sports betting odds work here” has a sharper answer than in most places: there is one menu, one set of betting rules, and one place a complaint goes when something goes wrong. This page walks through how the odds are built, how the market’s only provider prices them, what the bookmaker’s margin does to a price, and what offshore brands look like when a New Zealand punter opens the tab anyway.

Data current as of October 30, 2026 and checked against TAB NZ’s published betting rules, the Racing Industry Act 2020 and the Department of Internal Affairs’ public statements on the 28 June 2025 amendment.

TAB NZ runs two online brands from that base: TAB and Betcha. They are the same operator group, never rivals; describing them as competing products is the most common misreading of the New Zealand market. TAB is the retail and digital brand most punters have known for decades, the one with the broadcast presence on trackside and Sky coverage. Betcha is its younger, app-first sister, built around same-game multis, odds boosts and a Bet Social feed where punters follow tipsters, share bets and chat through races and matches. Both run on the same back end, settle on the same TAB NZ wallet, and feed the same minimum-harm framework.

Below the TAB pair sit the offshore brands that New Zealand players still see in search results, on social feeds and in app stores. Thunderpick, Rooster.bet, Winz.io, BetAlright, Sportaza, FunBet, BillyBets and BetNinja each run their own sportsbook with their own licence in some other jurisdiction. None of them is licensed in New Zealand. The local prohibition targets the operator, not the punter — section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003, inserted in 2025, says an individual cannot be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore operator in breach of section 74AAA — but the practical difference is that none of those offshore brands comes with the New Zealand harm-minimisation tools, the New Zealand complaints route, or the consumer safeguards that TAB NZ and Betcha carry. A New Zealand resident opening a Thunderpick account or a Rooster.bet account is doing so on the offshore brand’s own terms, in the offshore brand’s own jurisdiction.

That single-market structure is what shapes everything that follows on this page. The bet types come from TAB NZ’s published betting rules. The odds carry TAB NZ’s margin. The safer-gambling tools sit inside the TAB NZ app. The complaints route ends with the Department of Internal Affairs and the New Zealand courts, not with a Curaçao or Anjouan regulator. Anything an offshore brand offers is an add-on to a market the law says it cannot lawfully serve from.

The TAB NZ monopoly, in plain terms

Section 74AAA is short on its face and wide in practice. It says that no person other than TAB NZ may offer racing betting, sports betting, or other racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, no matter where that person is resident or where the offer is incorporated. It does not require the offshore brand to have a New Zealand server, an office in Auckland, or even a marketing line aimed at Kiwis. The liability sits on the offer itself: a brand whose terms page accepts New Zealand customers in 2026 is the brand section 74AAA reaches.

There is no licence to apply for and no licence register for bookmakers. There is only one lawful provider, because that is what the statute sets up. TAB NZ was created under the Racing Industry Act 2020 as the sole betting provider for racing and sports in New Zealand, and section 74AAA keeps it that way.

The Department of Internal Affairs is the gambling regulator under the Gambling Act 2003 and monitors compliance with the betting prohibition. It told providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect on 28 June 2025. The penalty for an offshore operator breaching section 74AAA is not stated in the section itself and no prosecution of an offshore bookmaker was found in the public record — what the DIA has done is the withdrawal letter, and what it has published is the warning to consumers that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits and may not pay out large wins.

What TAB NZ runs and who runs it

TAB NZ is the operating name for the New Zealand Racing Board, the statutory body that holds the monopoly. Its racing and sports betting business is run day-to-day by Entain NZ under a 25-year partnership signed in 2023. Entain owns and operates the TAB platform, takes the operating risk, and shares the upside: the agreement gives Entain a 50/50 share of gross profits, with at least $150m a year flowing to TAB NZ for the first five years. Entain also pledged a one-off $100m payment to the racing sector when the deal was signed. The partnership is the reason TAB and Betcha run on technology comparable to a modern offshore sportsbook rather than the older retail-only platform the old TAB was known for in the early 2000s.

Two operational details follow from that arrangement. First, the betting rules TAB NZ publishes — the ones that define Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie, Big6, Multi and Same Game Multi — are the only set of rules that govern a sports or racing bet in New Zealand, and they govern it whether the punter is on the TAB app or the Betcha app. Second, the customer-facing change of pace inside that partnership has been at the Betcha end: a daily Toolbox of odds boosts and insurance tools for bets that miss, a Playbook of tips and match analysis, and the Bet Social section. TAB itself has moved more cautiously, layering in same-race multis, same-game multis, one-tap popular multis, Place Extra (which lets punters back runners to finish up to 10th in selected races), Trackside live race streaming with in-app betting, racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools.

What the law does and does not block

Section 74AAA covers racing betting and sports betting. It does not cover online casino gambling; that is the territory of the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026, which licences online casino games only and does not extend the betting monopoly. TAB NZ won the right to apply for a casino licence under that act; that does not change anything about the sports and racing side.

Virtual sports — computer-simulated events — fall under the 2026 casino law as casino gambling rather than sports betting, so a virtual sports product is regulated through the casino framework. Esports sits in a grey zone: whether esports betting counts as “sports betting” under the Racing Industry Act is not established in statute or in published DIA guidance, and the offshore brands that run esports markets are not authorised to do so for New Zealand customers under section 74AAA in any case. Greyhound racing is closing in stages from 1 August 2026, and from that date offshore operators may not take bets on greyhound races either.

The law does not geo-block offshore websites. There is no payment-blocking order and no bank obligation to refuse gambling transactions. New Zealand does not run a national online-betting exclusion register; the exclusion register the casino law requires applies to online casinos, not to sports or racing betting. TAB NZ and Betcha carry their own exclusion that applies across both brands.

What “odds” actually mean in a sports bet

An odds figure is a multiplier on the stake that returns the stake and the profit together. Decimal odds — the form TAB NZ publishes, the form $2.10 reads as — work this way: a $10 bet at odds of $2.10 returns $21 if it wins, which is the $10 stake plus $11 of profit. A $10 bet at odds of $1.50 returns $15, which is the $10 stake plus $5 of profit. A $10 bet at odds of $5.00 returns $50, which is the $10 stake plus $40 of profit.

The return is always stake × odds. The net profit is stake × (odds − 1). The two are easy to confuse in a payout screen because most betting apps show one figure and not the other; both are worth knowing because the net profit is what decides whether a bet was worth the risk.

This arithmetic holds for a single bet. A combination bet — a multi in TAB NZ’s terminology — works the same way at the end of the race: the stake is multiplied by the combined odds, which is the product of the odds of each leg. A four-leg multi at odds of $2.10, $1.80, $3.00 and $1.50 has combined odds of 2.10 × 1.80 × 3.00 × 1.50 = $17.01. A $10 stake returns $170.10 if all four legs win. If any one leg loses, the whole multi loses; the multi pays nothing on a partial result.

The TAB NZ app surfaces that logic in two products: a Same Race Multi, where all runners come from one race, and a Same Game Multi, where all legs come from one match or one event. The legs of a same-game multi multiply in the same way; the difference is the source of the selections, not the math.

How the market’s price is built

The headline odds are not the only number inside a price. Every market a bookmaker publishes — the 1X2 on a football match, the head-to-head on a tennis match, the line on a basketball total — has a margin baked into the odds of each outcome. The margin is the slice of every dollar bet that the bookmaker keeps, on average across all outcomes of that market.

The arithmetic is straightforward. For a two-way market at odds of $1.90 on each side, the implied probabilities sum to 1 ÷ 1.90 + 1 ÷ 1.90 = 0.5263 + 0.5263 = 1.0526. That sum is greater than 1 because each price has been trimmed from its true probability. The “payout share” of the market is 1 ÷ 1.0526 = 0.9500, or 95%. The margin is 1 − 0.9500 = 0.0500, or 5%. A 5% margin means the bookmaker keeps 5 cents of every dollar bet on that market, on average across both outcomes and across a large sample of bets. The remaining 95 cents is paid out as winnings.

For the New Zealand punter, that means a market priced at $1.90 / $1.90 is returning 95 cents on the dollar in the long run. The other 5 cents is the bookmaker’s edge. Push the margin higher — a market priced at $1.85 / $1.85, where the implied probabilities sum to 1.0811 and the overround is about 8.11% — and the punter’s payout share drops to 92.5% or so, depending on the exact numbers. Push the margin lower — a market priced at $1.95 / $1.95 — and the payout share climbs to about 97.5%.

The margin is invisible in the odds themselves; it shows up only when the implied probabilities are summed. A punter who never sums them never sees the margin. A punter who sums them, even occasionally, sees the same 2–8% spread on every market across every bookmaker, and learns to read the margin as the cost of betting on that market.

The illustrative calculation

Take the most common two-way market a New Zealand punter will see: a head-to-head on a tennis match, or a moneyline on a basketball game, with both sides priced at $1.90. The implied probability of each side, before margin, is 50%. With the margin inside, the implied probability of each side becomes 1 ÷ 1.90 = 52.63%, summing to 105.26% across both sides. The overround is 5.26%, and the margin is 5.0%.

That 5.26% is the price of betting on this event at this bookmaker on this market. Across all the bets a punter places on this market over a season, the punter’s expected loss is 5.26 cents for every dollar staked. A punter who bets $1,000 on this market across the season, in any combination of bets at any combination of stakes, will on average lose about $52.60 of that $1,000 to the margin. That is the arithmetic, and it is the same arithmetic on every market every bookmaker publishes.

The honest reading is that a 5% margin is on the lower end of what a competitive sportsbook charges. Margins on TAB NZ’s racing tote products work on a different basis because they are pool betting: the dividend is paid out of the pool after the house take, and the take is published in TAB NZ’s betting rules. Margins on TAB NZ’s fixed-odds sports markets vary by sport and by market, but a $1.90 / $1.90 head-to-head sits in the middle of what a sharp punter calls a competitive price. Margins on niche markets, on novelty props and on long-shot futures tend to be higher than that. The bookmaker’s edge is widest where the punter is least likely to compare prices — and on TAB NZ’s menu, there is no other price to compare to.

The deadline and what voids a bet

A bet is a contract. TAB NZ’s betting rules define when the contract starts (when the bet is accepted and the stake is deducted from the wallet), when it ends (when the market is settled and the stake plus any winnings are credited back, or the stake is forfeit on a loss), and what makes it void (a false start, a player withdrawal before the event, a non-runner in a racing multi, an abandoned event with no result).

The Mega Multi bonus in the TAB NZ app sits inside those rules: the app lists a bonus of up to $50 in Bonus Cash when a multi of four or more legs falls short by a set number of legs. The refund — if any — comes as Bonus Cash, not as cash, and Bonus Cash carries its own terms on how it is spent and on what it can be withdrawn as. A punter placing a four-leg multi and missing by one leg reads the terms carefully, because the difference between a small cash refund and a slice of Bonus Cash with conditions is the difference between a useful safety net and a marketing line that does not pay out the way it sounds.

The bet types TAB NZ actually offers

TAB NZ’s published betting rules split into racing products and sports products. The racing products are the older part of the menu: Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie and Big6. The sports products are the newer part: fixed-odds single bets on the outcome of an event, fixed-odds multis across multiple events, same-game multis on one event, and live betting on selected events as they run.

Racing bet types

Win pays on the runner that finishes first. Place pays on a runner that finishes first, second or third, with the place dividend reduced relative to the win dividend; the size of the reduction depends on the number of runners in the field. Each Way combines a Win stake and a Place stake in equal proportion; a punter who bets $10 Each Way effectively bets $10 to Win and $10 to Place.

Quinella pays on the first two in either order. Exacta pays on the first two in the correct order. Trifecta pays on the first three in the correct order. First4 pays on the first four in the correct order. Each of these is a separate bet type with its own minimum stake and its own dividend rules; the dividends are calculated from the pool after the house take, and the published dividends are final once the race is settled.

Double, Treble and Daily Double combine legs across races: a Double selects the winner of race 5 and the winner of race 6, a Treble extends to three races, a Daily Double is a special-form Double run on selected meetings. Running Double is a Double on consecutive races at the same meeting. Quaddie selects the winner of four designated races at a meeting, usually the last four. Big6 is the larger version of Quaddie, picking six designated races at major meetings.

Multis and Same Race Multis sit at the edge of the racing menu. A Multi is the racing-side name for a combination bet: the punter picks runners across two or more races, the odds multiply into one price, and the bet pays only if every runner wins. A Same Race Multi is a multi whose legs all come from one race: the punter picks Win, Place and/or exotic outcomes from a single race and lets the legs combine into one betslip.

Sports bet types

Fixed-odds single bets on the outcome of a match or event form the spine of the sports menu. Head-to-head is the most common format: pick the team or player that wins outright, or the draw if the market allows it. Line betting and handicap adjust the line so the favourite starts with a virtual deficit or the underdog starts with a virtual head start; the bet is on the result after the line is applied.

Total (over/under) is on the combined score of an event, or on a player’s individual score. Margin betting is on the winning margin in a game. Props are on specific occurrences within a game — first try-scorer in rugby, first goalscorer in football, total aces in a tennis match.

Same Game Multis are the product TAB NZ has built most around: a multi whose legs come from one match. A punter on an NRL game might back the Warriors to win, with total points over 40.5 and the first try-scorer to be a specific player; the three legs multiply into one price, and the bet pays only if all three legs land. Same Game Multis let the punter shape a price to their view of the game, rather than picking from the headline odds.

Live betting on selected events is in the TAB NZ apps. The bet types are narrower than the pre-match menu — usually head-to-head and a small number of markets — and the odds move as the event progresses. The punt is on the live price at the moment of the bet; once the bet is accepted, that price is locked in.

Bonus Cash and the offers around the bets

New TAB NZ customers can receive Bonus Cash that can be split across multiple bets. The Mega Multi bonus pays up to $50 in Bonus Cash when a multi of four or more legs falls short by a set number of legs. Place Extra lets punters back runners to finish up to 10th in selected races. On Betcha, the Toolbox runs daily odds boosts and insurance tools for bets that miss, and the Bet Social feed surfaces tipsters and shared betslips.

Every one of these offers carries terms. The Bonus Cash is bonus cash, not cash; what it can be spent on, the minimum odds it can be used at, the expiry, and the conditions on withdrawing any winnings from it are all in the offer terms. The odds boosts raise the headline price on a specific market for a limited window; if the punter takes the boost, the new price is locked in at the moment of the bet, and the boost stays static as the odds move in the window. The insurance tools refund a slice of a losing stake, usually as Bonus Cash rather than as cash. The punter who picks up a “boosted odds” headline reads the fine print first, because the marketing line and the arithmetic behind it are often different sentences.

Responsible gambling under a single-operator model

The single-operator structure does the heavy lifting on harm minimisation. Because there is only one lawful provider, the deposit-limit, time-out and self-exclusion tools in the TAB NZ app apply to every legal sports and racing bet a New Zealand punter can place. There is no need for a national exclusion register: the exclusion is at the source.

TAB NZ accounts need a verified New Zealand address and ID. That is the gate on account opening: a punter who fails the address and ID check cannot open a TAB NZ or Betcha account, and cannot place a bet. The age for betting is 18; the TAB NZ app carries a 17+ App Store age rating but the terms state that customers must be 18 or over to bet, and betting under 18 is an offence under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020. Land-based casinos are 20 — the betting age and the casino age are not the same.

The safer-gambling tools

The TAB NZ app lists deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. Deposit limits cap how much a punter can deposit in a day, a week or a month. Time-outs pause the account for a chosen window — a day, a week, a month — in which the punter cannot log in or place a bet. Self-exclusion closes the account for a longer window — six months, a year, or longer — and the exclusion applies across TAB and Betcha together because they are the same operator.

The tools work the way they are described, and they sit inside the same app the punter uses to place a bet. The friction is low: a punter who wants to set a deposit limit can do so from the account settings, and the limit takes effect immediately. A punter who wants to self-exclude can do so from the same menu, and the exclusion is processed by the TAB NZ responsible-gambling team.

The help that sits beside the tools

The free Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655) and the text line (8006) are listed inside the TAB NZ app. Safer Gambling Aotearoa runs counselling and support services for people affected by gambling harm, and is the funded body for treatment services. TAB NZ pays a Problem Gambling Levy of 0.74% (in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028) that funds those services.

The offshore brands do not connect to that framework. They do not advertise the Gambling Helpline because the figures they serve are not in New Zealand; the New Zealand complaints route does not reach them; the harm-minimisation framework does not apply to their accounts. A New Zealand punter who opens a Thunderpick or Rooster.bet account and runs into a problem with payouts, account closure or self-exclusion is on the offshore brand’s own terms, in the offshore brand’s own jurisdiction.

Offshore brands a New Zealand punter will see

Eight offshore brands are common in the New Zealand search results and app stores: Thunderpick, Rooster.bet, Winz.io, BetAlright, Sportaza, FunBet, BillyBets and BetNinja. None of them is licensed in New Zealand; the law says they cannot lawfully take a bet from a person in New Zealand, and they each carry on regardless because the law targets the operator and the enforcement is light.

The brands are listed for comparison because New Zealand players meet them and because they run different models. Thunderpick is a crypto-first esports and sportsbook operated by Paloma Media B.V. under a Curaçao Gaming Authority licence. Rooster.bet is a sportsbook-and-casino operated by Novatrix SRL under a Tobique Gaming Commission licence, with live betting, sports promotions and predictions sections. Winz.io holds Anjouan and Tobique licences. BetAlright accepts customers over 18 and runs a separate partners site. Sportaza offers cash out, Bet Builder, multiples, Asian lines and interval markets in 1, 5, 10 or 15 minute ranges. FunBet covers football, ice hockey, American football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, rugby and baseball with live betting. BillyBets offers three odds formats (Decimal, American and Fractional) and runs a coin-shop loyalty programme with five VIP levels. BetNinja is licensed by the Union of the Comoros.

The common thread is that none of them is in New Zealand. The New Zealand punter who opens any of these accounts is doing so on the offshore brand’s terms, in the offshore brand’s jurisdiction, with no recourse to the Department of Internal Affairs or to Safer Gambling Aotearoa if something goes wrong. The DIA’s published warning — that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits and may not pay out large wins — is the consumer-facing version of the legal gap.

Operator reviews

1. TAB — the full TAB NZ menu with the longest track record

TAB is the older of the two TAB NZ brands. It carries the full racing menu — Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie, Big6 — and the full fixed-odds sports menu on rugby, league, football, tennis, cricket, basketball, American football, baseball and the major international events. The app is “TAB – Racing & Sports Betting”, published on the New Zealand App Store under the seller name New Zealand Racing Board, first released on 8 September 2014. Same Race Multis, Same Game Multis, one-tap Popular Multis, Place Extra (up to 10th in selected races), Trackside live race streaming with in-app betting, racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge are all in the menu.

The product range is the deepest of the two TAB NZ brands. Betcha is sharper on the social and boost features; TAB is broader on the racing-and-sports depth and on the broadcast features (Trackside, form tools). A punter who wants the most comprehensive menu and the longer history picks TAB; a punter who wants the social feed and the daily Toolbox picks Betcha. Both settle on the same wallet, both fall under the same self-exclusion, both carry the same Problem Gambling Levy-funded harm minimisation.

This is the right starting point for a New Zealand punter, and the only legal starting point for online sports and racing betting in the country.

2. Betcha — same wallet, social-led product

Betcha is the app-first sister brand of TAB NZ. It carries the same underlying sports and racing markets as TAB, but it wraps them in a different product surface: a daily Toolbox with odds boosts and insurance tools, a Bet Social section where punters chat, follow tipsters, share bets or pools, and a Playbook with tips and match analysis. Same Game Multis, Mega Multi Bonus Cash on a multi of four or more legs that falls short by a set number of legs, and the rest of the TAB NZ bonus structure sit inside the Toolbox and the bonus pages.

Betcha is the brand for a punter who wants the TAB NZ pricing with a younger, social-led product on top. The pricing is the same as TAB because the same operator sets it; the difference is the product surface and the way the offers are framed. A punter who wants a broader racing depth and the broadcast features picks TAB; a punter who wants the social feed and the daily odds boosts picks Betcha. There is no price comparison to make between the two because they are the same operator.

The legal status is identical to TAB: licensed in New Zealand under the Racing Industry Act 2020, subject to the TAB NZ harm-minimisation framework, covered by the TAB NZ self-exclusion.

3. Thunderpick — crypto-native sportsbook, not licensed in New Zealand

Thunderpick is operated by Paloma Media B.V., a Curaçao company with company number 146988, licensed by the Curaçao Gaming Authority under licence number OGL/2024/677/0722. The product is a crypto sportsbook and casino built around esports and mainstream sports, with a deposit-and-bet flow in crypto rather than fiat.

For a New Zealand punter the licence gap is the headline: section 74AAA bars any person other than TAB NZ from offering sports betting here. The Curaçao licence gives Thunderpick no right to offer these services, the New Zealand complaints route does not reach it, and the New Zealand harm-minimisation framework does not apply. A New Zealand punter who opens a Thunderpick account is doing so on the offshore brand’s own terms, in the offshore brand’s own jurisdiction.

The product itself is competitive on crypto rails and on esports market depth. For a punter outside New Zealand it sits in the mid-market of crypto sportsbooks. For a New Zealand punter it is not the lawful option, and the consumer protections that come with the TAB NZ product do not apply.

4. Rooster.bet — Tobique-licensed sportsbook, not licensed in New Zealand

Rooster.bet is operated by Novatrix SRL, a company incorporated in Costa Rica with registration number 3-102-893958, under e-gaming licence No. 0000002 issued by the Tobique Gaming Commission. The product is a sportsbook with live betting, sports promotions, results, schedule, esports and predictions sections; odds are shown in six formats.

The Tobique licence gives Rooster.bet no local authority. The brand does not carry the New Zealand harm-minimisation tools, the New Zealand complaints route does not reach it, and the DIA’s published warnings about overseas operators apply. A New Zealand punter opening a Rooster.bet account is on the offshore brand’s own terms.

The product surface is closer to a traditional sportsbook than Thunderpick’s crypto-first design, and the predictions section adds a tipster angle that some punters find useful. The legal position is unchanged: not licensed in New Zealand, no New Zealand protections.

5. Winz.io — Anjouan and Tobique licences, not licensed in New Zealand

Winz.io holds Anjouan and Tobique licences and runs a sportsbook and casino. The footer states the licences; the product includes slots, live casino, sports and a sports-betting menu. For a New Zealand punter the position is the same as Rooster.bet: the licences give no local authority, the New Zealand harm-minimisation tools do not apply, and the New Zealand complaints route does not reach it.

The product includes a sportsbook with mainstream and niche markets. The legal frame is unchanged from any other offshore brand in this list. A New Zealand punter must treat Winz.io the same way they treat Rooster.bet and Thunderpick — as an offshore product on its own terms, with no New Zealand consumer protections.

6. BetAlright — bare-minimum operator profile, not licensed in New Zealand

BetAlright accepts customers over 18 years of age and runs a separate partners site at partnersbetalright.com. No licence that applies in New Zealand is named in the public profile. The product is a mid-market sportsbook and casino; the brand runs promos and a partner programme.

For a New Zealand punter the legal position is the same as the other offshore brands in this list: not licensed in New Zealand, no New Zealand consumer protections, no New Zealand complaints route, no application of the TAB NZ harm-minimisation framework. The bare-minimum operator profile — a name, a partners site, an age gate, no licence that reaches New Zealand — is itself the reason it sits below the brands that at least publish their offshore licence.

7. Sportaza — feature-rich offshore sportsbook, not licensed in New Zealand

Sportaza holds an Anjouan licence (ALSI-202606064-FI2). The product is a sportsbook with cash out before an event or market is finalised, a Bet Builder (where a void selection voids the whole betslip), multiples, Asian lines and interval markets in 1, 5, 10 or 15 minute ranges. The feature list is comparable to a modern offshore sportsbook and is competitive against other brands in the offshore segment.

The Anjouan licence gives Sportaza no right to take bets from people in New Zealand. The New Zealand harm-minimisation framework does not apply, and the complaints route is unavailable. A New Zealand punter opening a Sportaza account is on the offshore brand’s own terms.

The product is competitive on features; the legal frame is unchanged. The punter weighs the features against the lack of New Zealand protections, and that is the trade-off.

8. FunBet — broad-market offshore sportsbook, not licensed in New Zealand

FunBet’s sportsbook offers odds on football, ice hockey, American football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, rugby and baseball, with live betting and a bookmaker described as open 24/7. The product covers accumulators and bet builders. No licence that applies in New Zealand is named in the public profile.

The market coverage is broad for an offshore brand; the live betting and the accumulator-plus-bet-builder combination are useful. The legal position is unchanged: not licensed in New Zealand, no New Zealand consumer protections. A New Zealand punter weighs the market coverage against the gap, and the trade-off is the same as the other offshore brands.

9. BillyBets — multi-format and loyalty-programme offshore brand, not licensed in New Zealand

BillyBets offers three odds formats (Decimal at 2.00, American at +100, Fractional at 1/1), runs cashback and reload bonuses on sports, and operates a coin shop where coins collected by depositing, betting, tournaments and challenges can be exchanged for free bets and free spins. The VIP programme has five levels.

The multi-format odds display is useful for a punter who reads prices in their own format; the coin-shop loyalty programme is a retention mechanic rather than a price advantage; the cashback and reload bonuses carry their own terms. The legal position is unchanged: no licence that applies in New Zealand is named, and the New Zealand consumer protections do not reach the brand.

A New Zealand punter who already bets offshore weighs BillyBets’ loyalty programme against the legal gap; a New Zealand punter who has not already chosen an offshore brand has no reason to start here when TAB and Betcha sit at the lawful end of the comparison.

10. BetNinja — Comoros-licensed offshore sportsbook, not licensed in New Zealand

BetNinja states that it is licensed to conduct online gaming operations by the Union of the Comoros. The product is a sportsbook and casino with mainstream markets. Like other offshore brands, BetNinja has no authority to take bets from people in New Zealand.

The legal position is the same as every other offshore brand in this list: not licensed in New Zealand, no New Zealand consumer protections, no New Zealand complaints route, no application of the TAB NZ harm-minimisation framework. The product is competitive against other offshore brands in the mid-market segment; the gap to the TAB NZ product is unchanged.

What the comparison is actually telling a New Zealand punter

The comparison collapses to two things. The first is the legal position: TAB and Betcha are the only lawful options in New Zealand, and the offshore brands are not. The second is the price: the TAB NZ odds carry a margin that is invisible in the headline price, the offshore brand odds carry their own margin, and the punter who never sums the implied probabilities never sees either margin.

The honest reading is that the lawful option and the offshore option are not on the same playing field. The TAB NZ product carries New Zealand consumer protections, New Zealand harm-minimisation tools and a New Zealand complaints route. The offshore product carries none of those. A punter who weighs the two on price alone misses the consumer-protection half of the trade-off; a punter who weighs the two on consumer protection alone misses the price half. The complete comparison includes both.

For a New Zealand punter who wants the lawful option, the choice between TAB and Betcha is a product-surface choice rather than a price choice: TAB for racing depth and broadcast features, Betcha for the social feed and the daily Toolbox. For a New Zealand punter who is willing to leave the lawful market, the choice between the offshore brands is a product-surface choice too: Thunderpick for crypto rails, Rooster.bet for a traditional sportsbook, Sportaza for the feature set, FunBet for the market coverage, BillyBets for the loyalty programme, and the others for the mid-market slot. The price comparison sits on top of all of that, and the price comparison starts with summing the implied probabilities and reading the margin.

Frequently asked questions

How do betting odds work?

Betting odds are a multiplier on the stake that returns the stake and the profit together. Decimal odds — the form TAB NZ publishes — multiply the stake by the odds to give the return if the bet wins. A $10 bet at odds of $2.50 returns $25, which is the $10 stake plus $15 of profit. The arithmetic is the same on every sports and racing bet: return = stake × odds, profit = stake × (odds − 1).

How does odds work with betting on horse racing?

TAB NZ’s racing bets use the same decimal odds format as the sports menu, with the dividend fixed once the race is settled for fixed-odds bets, or calculated from the pool after the house take for tote bets like Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Quaddie and Big6. Win pays on the runner that finishes first, Place pays on first, second or third, and Each Way combines a Win stake and a Place stake in equal proportion. Exotic bets pay on the runners in the correct order, with the dividend rising if no one else picks the same combination.

How do you bet at horse races?

Open a TAB NZ or Betcha account with a verified New Zealand address and ID, fund the wallet, and place the bet through the app or the retail terminal. Punters can bet pre-race or live through Trackside on selected meetings. The bet is on the runner, the bet type, the stake, and the race; once accepted, the bet is locked in at the displayed odds and settled when the race finishes.

Which bookmaker may lawfully take sports and racing bets in New Zealand?

TAB and Betcha are the only two online brands that may lawfully take sports and racing bets from people in New Zealand. Both are brands of TAB NZ, the sole lawful provider under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 (in force since 28 June 2025). Any other brand is offshore, is not licensed in New Zealand, and is breaking New Zealand law by taking bets from a person in New Zealand, even though the law targets the operator rather than the punter.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

The return is the stake multiplied by the odds. The net profit is the stake multiplied by the odds minus one, because the stake is returned alongside the profit. A $10 stake at odds of $2.10 returns $21 and pays $11 of profit; a $10 stake at odds of $5.00 returns $50 and pays $40 of profit. For a multi (a combination bet) the odds of each leg multiply into one combined odds, and the return is the stake multiplied by the combined odds if every leg wins; a single losing leg voids the whole multi.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?

The margin is the slice of every dollar bet that the bookmaker keeps on average across all outcomes of a market. It is calculated by summing the implied probabilities of every outcome — 1 divided by the decimal odds — and subtracting 1 from that sum. A two-way market at $1.90 / $1.90 has implied probabilities of 52.63% on each side, summing to 105.26%. The overround is 5.26%, and the margin is 5.0%. That 5.0% is the cost of betting on this market at this bookmaker: every $1 staked returns about 95 cents in the long run. Margins on sportsbook markets typically run from 2% on the sharpest prices to 8% or higher on niche props and long-shot futures.

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