Four New Zealand influencers have been hit with fines for promoting unlicensed online casinos.
Collectively, the influencers, alongside the Curacao-licensed online casino Spinbet, have been fined NZ$125,000 (£53,900) for breaching New Zealand’s advertising laws, which prohibit the promotion of online casinos.
Calen Morris and Billy Whaanga have been handed $20,000 (£8,622) fines for four breaches, while Tuhira Wana has been given a $15,000 (£6,466) fine for three infractions.
Millie Elder-Holmes, who has over 122,000 followers on Instagram alone, has been fined $10,000 (£4,311) for two similar breaches.
Elder-Holmes previously became the first influencer to be fined by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) when she paid a $5,000 (£2,155) penalty in May.
Spinbet has been fined $60,000 for 12 infringements.
Regulating the wild west
Under current rules, overseas online casinos operate in a grey market in New Zealand. However, the promotion of overseas platforms is prohibited, and regulations are enforced by the DIA.
Due to the lack of regulation, Vicki Scott, Director of Internal Affairs at the DIA, told Radio NZ that the country’s market is “essentially the wild west out there with these online casinos”.
She continued: “The risk here is that we can’t vouch for these entities’ harm minimisation practices, things like age verification. We don’t know anything about their consumer protection processes. That includes the ability to actually get paid out when you win. Or even if they’re genuine casinos or scams, which we’re hearing about in some cases.
“Because there’s no regulation, it also means there’s no guardrails in the type of advertising that can occur.“
Scott said she had heard that some influencers are being offered between $50,000 and $500,000, making it financially viable to ignore the rules and incur only a $5,000 fine per post.
Although the DIA has little power to directly take action on overseas operators, Scott said that the department has begun talks with social media platforms to directly target influencers who step over the line by deactivating their accounts, directly threatening their source of income.
“The platforms themselves, the social media companies, are really cooperative and they are real allies in this space,” she said.
The start of a new era
New legislation is set to take effect in 2026 that will regulate New Zealand’s online gambling market for the first time, granting 15 casino licences.
The licences will be available via an auction, and the move is expected to raise $200m (£86.2m) for the government.
With the new regulation will also come new power for the country’s gaming regulator.
Unlicensed platforms could face fines of up to $5m, and the regulator will be able to issue takedown notices demanding the removal of advertising that breaches the rules of the new gaming act.
“Currently, New Zealanders can legally access thousands of offshore gambling websites. But the market is unregulated, so there are no player safety standards or oversight of harm minimisation,” said Brooke van Velden, New Zealand’s Minister of Internal Affairs.
“My intention with this bill is to ensure that online gambling is safer for New Zealanders who wish to gamble online to do so. In addition, companies providing this service contribute to tax revenue and funding the services that treat gambling harm in New Zealand.”
