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New Zealand’s government has introduced draft legislation for a regulated online casino market of no more than 15 licensees, but key licensing parameters remain unclear.
Internal affairs minister Brooke van Velden on Monday (June 30) introduced the long-telegraphed Online Casino Gambling Bill, which she said in a statement would “prioritise harm minimisation, consumer protection and tax collection”.
However, key advertising and harm minimisation regulations are “currently being developed”, forcing prospective licensees to wait more months for clarity on application requirements.
“The bill will proceed to select committee later this year and New Zealanders will have the ability to have their say through the select committee process,” van Velden said.
The bill confirms that the market will put a maximum of 15 licences up to auction for online gambling excluding lotteries and sports betting, applicants will need to outline their “business plans for New Zealand”, advertising will be permitted with certain restrictions, and that fines of up to NZ$5m ($3m) will apply for violations, including extraterritorial violations.
Licences will be valid for three years, renewable once only for a maximum of five years.
Information yet to be clarified includes the precise number of licences within the limit of 15 that will be offered, minimum capital requirements, applicant information that must be submitted, and the application and auction timetable.
General requirements in Clause 14, however, requires applicants to declare ownership structures, sourcing of capital, gambling platform features and intended branding of online casino products, various due diligence provisions for company officers, and existing influences over online casino licences.
The last of these declarations is pertinent to a restriction on any individual having “significant influence” – defined as holding a licence or having at least a 20 percent stake in a licence – over more than three licences.
Applicants must also submit strategies for advertising and marketing, consumer protection, harm prevention/minimisation and compliance.
Other features of the bill include a ban on provision of credit by the licensee to customers, a mandatory complaints register to be maintained by each licensee, and maximum civil penalties of NZ$300,000 and NZ$5m for individuals and organisations, respectively, that break the law.
The bill also contains clauses that allow and limit the secretary for internal affairs to share information with foreign gambling regulators, but much of the hard regulatory detail for licensees relating to technological standards, limits for payouts, duration of customer gambling, gambling exclusion, pre-commitment levels, advertising and inducement restrictions, and several other issues remain to be fleshed out.
Fees, levies and charges are also yet to be revealed.
The draft legislation is almost a year in the making and is consistent with a raft of undertakings that van Velden has made since announcing the initiative last July.
This has included pushback against stakeholders such as New Zealand’s SkyCity Entertainment Group and Entain partner TAB New Zealand, which have lobbied against a licensee field of more than five or seven, respectively.
However, a promise to ban online gambling company sponsorships is worded less definitively than van Velden’s promise might require. Clause 77(1) merely floats regulations on “endorsements, sponsorships and similar third-party arrangements in advertisements” and their possible prohibition.
