What online betting in New Zealand actually costs the punter in 2026

Updated October 2026

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The first thing any search for online betting in New Zealand turns up is the same sentence in different shapes: there is no licence to apply for, and there is no licence register. The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA into the Racing Industry Act 2020, and the section took effect on 28 June 2025. From that date, no person other than TAB NZ may offer racing betting, sports betting, or other racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, regardless of where that person is resident or incorporated. TAB NZ and its online sister brand Betcha are the two brands that may lawfully take such bets online. Every other site a punter can name — Glorion, RoyalistPlay, Sportaza, Telbet, Alawin, FunBet, BetNinja, 22Bet — operates outside that monopoly. The Department of Internal Affairs told those operators to withdraw with immediate effect. The page below works through what the law allows, what the operators charge for it, and what a bettor paying the actual price is left with.

Snapshot current as of 26 October 2026, cross-checked against the Racing Industry Act 2020 (as amended), the Gambling Act 2003, the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 and TAB NZ’s published terms.

The shape of the New Zealand market in 2026

The legal shape of online betting in New Zealand is a single-operator market. TAB NZ is the only lawful provider. Its two online brands are TAB and Betcha, which are one operator group, never rivals. They run on the same wallet, the same harm-minimisation tools and the same sports and racing catalogue. Treat them as the same shop with two different front doors: TAB (the older brand) leans racing and multis; Betcha (released on the New Zealand App Store on 6 August 2024) leans the same markets with a newer app and the same betting rules.

TAB NZ does not run the platform itself. Under a 25-year agreement signed in 2023, Entain runs the TAB business. The split is a 50/50 share of gross profits, with at least NZ$150 million a year going to TAB NZ for the first five years. Entain also pledged a one-off NZ$100 million payment to the racing sector. That arrangement is why Betcha looks like a separate app rather than a TAB reskin: it is the newer face on the same partnership.

Everything else a punter sees online is an offshore brand. Some carry an Anjouan licence (Sportaza), some a Tobique Gaming Commission licence (RoyalistPlay), some a Curaçao licence (Roobet, 22Bet, Thunderpick), some a Costa Rica company registration (RoyalistPlay again, SpinBetter). None of those licences gives the holder the right to take bets from a person in New Zealand. A licence fee paid to an offshore regulator does not turn an unlawful offer into a lawful one; New Zealand law targets the operator, not the punter, but the operator is the one on the wrong side of section 74AAA.

Going to the races and watching the screen

Live betting in New Zealand means TAB NZ’s live markets, in its apps, on the sports it covers. The app lists in-play racing and in-play sports for racing codes and selected team sports, with Trackside live race streaming built into the same interface. Cash Out is not a separate product on the site — it is the same betting slip you already had, with a value tied to the current state of the market. When TAB offers it on a leg, that is the cash-out feature.

The offshore brands reviewed below are loud about live betting. FunBet describes its bookmaker as open around the clock, and several of them list in-play football, basketball and tennis at all hours. What they do not list is a New Zealand harm-minimisation framework, a New Zealand complaints route, or a path through the Gambling Commission if a bet is voided. The live betting on offer is real. The recourse attached to it is not.

What a bet pays back

A decimal odds price is what a winning stake returns. The calculation is plain: return equals stake multiplied by odds, and the net profit on a winning stake is stake multiplied by (odds minus one). A NZ$10 bet at $2.10 returns NZ$21 (NZ$11 net). That is the surface, and it is identical for TAB NZ and for any offshore bookmaker.

The harder number is what the bookmaker keeps. The bookmaker’s margin is what sits inside every price on a market, built from the prices on all outcomes of that market. The payout share across all outcomes of one market is the sum of one divided by each outcome’s decimal price (1 over odds one plus 1 over odds two and so on). The margin is one minus that payout share. A two-outcome market priced at $1.91 and $1.91 has a payout share of about 1.05 (two times 1 over 1.91), which is impossible — those prices imply a margin of about negative four and a half percent, and the bookmaker will lose on every match. A more typical two-outcome market at $1.91 and $2.01 has a payout share of 1 over 1.91 plus 1 over 2.01, or about 1.0217, so a margin of about 2.17 percent. Roughly: the lower the margin, the better the prices the punter sees across the whole market.

The margin is not the cost of any single bet. It is the average cost across many bets at those prices. A single bet at $2.10 is just a single bet at $2.10; what the margin tells the punter is what the bookmaker is taking from every dollar the market sees over time. Read the margin as a tax built into the price, not as a fee on the slip.

For a combination bet, the odds of the legs multiply into one price. A multi of three legs at $1.50, $2.00 and $3.00 carries combined odds of $9.00. The stake comes back with profit on a win; lose any leg and the whole multi loses. Multi builders on TAB NZ include Same Race Multis (legs from one race) and Same Game Multis (legs from one match), plus a Place Extra option letting punters back runners to finish as high as tenth in selected races. Those are convenience features over the same multiplication.

Sports and tournaments on the New Zealand card

TAB NZ’s published coverage runs through horse and harness racing and greyhound racing (the greyhound code is closing in stages from 1 August 2026), plus rugby union, rugby league, cricket, football, basketball and the major US codes. The card is a New Zealand-shaped one: All Blacks tests, Super Rugby Pacific, NRL, Black Caps cricket, Warriors NRL, Melbourne Cup day racing. International fixtures sit alongside the domestic ones. Promoted bet types include win, place, each way, quinella, exacta, trifecta and First4 on racing, and head-to-head, line and handicap, plus the multis described above on sport.

Offshore brands widen the menu. FunBet lists football, ice hockey, American football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, rugby and baseball; Baji lists cricket with strong Asian leagues; Roobet adds esports alongside mainstream US sport. Esports is the soft edge of the catalogue — TAB NZ does not list it and the law is not settled on whether esports counts as “sports betting” under the Racing Industry Act 2020, so a punter betting on a Dota 2 match through an offshore brand is sitting on a question the law has not answered yet. Treat it as unsettled.

New bookmakers and what “new” means in NZ

A new betting site is a constantly refreshing list of offshore brands. The market-wide launch pad is a Curaçao, Anjouan or Tobique licence and a Malta- or Costa-Rica-registered company; the launch is real. What “new” does not mean in New Zealand is “newly licensed to take your bets”. There is no licence to apply for. Any new site is, by definition, unlawful to serve a person in New Zealand under section 74AAA. The novelty lasts as long as the marketing budget does.

The licence claims on a few of the listed brands illustrate what a “licence” can mean. Sportaza names an Anjouan licence in its footer (ALSI-202606064-FI2) and then cites a Tobique licence number in its terms — two licences, neither of which extends to New Zealand. RoyalistPlay cites a Tobique e-gaming licence (number 0000002) from a Costa Rica company (Novatrix SRL). Thunderpick carries a Curaçao Gaming Authority licence (OGL/2024/677/0722). 22Bet sits on the standard Curaçao 8048/JAZ. None of those licences reaches inside the New Zealand border.

How online betting works here

The mechanics of a TAB NZ bet are the standard mechanics: open an account, verify identity and New Zealand address, deposit through the methods TAB lists (bank transfer, debit card, POLi and the wallet options in its terms), pick a market, enter a stake, confirm the bet. The settlement rules and the voiding rules live in TAB NZ’s published betting rules. The same flow, minus the New Zealand address verification, is the flow on every offshore brand reviewed.

Withdrawals run at the speed TAB NZ sets in its terms, and at the speed the offshore brand chooses. TAB NZ does not name a published withdrawal SLA in its app listing; the rate is operator-level rather than statute-level, and the bottleneck is verification plus the payment rail. Offshore, the picture is the picture of every Curaçao or Anjouan operator: an internal approval step that can be hours or days, then a payout that depends on the method (e-wallet faster, wire slower), with the standard puzzle that a deposit method is usually the only way to withdraw without an extra check.

The ten brands reviewed

TAB (New Zealand licensed)

TAB NZ is the lawful bookmaker under the Racing Industry Act 2020. It is licensed through the statute rather than through a register — there is no licence register for bookmakers because there is only one lawful provider. The published cover spans horse, harness and greyhound racing (greyhound racing closing in stages from 1 August 2026) and team sport including rugby union, rugby league, football, basketball and cricket, with Same Race Multis, Same Game Multis, one-tap Popular Multis, Mega Multi bonus cash back when a multi of four or more legs falls short by a set number of legs, and Place Extra letting runners back to tenth in selected races. Safer-gambling tools are deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion across both TAB and Betcha, and the app lists the Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655) and the text line 8006. Bonus terms sit in TAB NZ’s own terms; no statute caps them.

For a New Zealand-resident punter, TAB is the one place the whole protection chain reaches: a regulator (DIA), a complaints route (the Gambling Commission), a New Zealand problem-gambling levy on the operator (0.74 percent in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028), and harm-minimisation tools that the law expects. The trade-off is the catalogue breadth — TAB covers what New Zealand punters want covered, but it does not carry the depth of an offshore bookmaker in tennis props, esports or exotic markets.

Betcha (New Zealand licensed)

Betcha is the second online brand of TAB NZ, released on the New Zealand App Store on 6 August 2024. It is the same licensed operator under section 74AAA, the same wallet, the same markets, and the same rules. The product surface differs: a newer app built around the same betting slip, with the same racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools, the same Same Game Multis, and the same Trackside live race streaming. Betcha is not a rival to TAB; it is a second front on the same operator.

For a punter choosing between the two, the question is which app you want to spend an evening in. Betcha has had less time to pick up legacy navigation patterns, and a punter used to one of the two apps usually stays there. The catalogue, the prices, the markets, the safer-gambling tools and the helpline are identical.

Glorion (not licensed in NZ)

Glorion lists no licence in its terms that applies in New Zealand. Customer support runs by Live Chat and email, and the site accepts customers aged 18 and over. There is no New Zealand complaints route or harm-minimisation framework that reaches it, and there is no path through the Gambling Commission if a bet dispute arises. What it offers, on its own terms, is what its catalogue lists and its own customer service handles.

RoyalistPlay (not licensed in NZ)

RoyalistPlay is owned and operated by Novatrix SRL, a Costa Rica company with registration number 3-102-893958, and states that it holds e-gaming licence number 0000002 from the Tobique Gaming Commission. That licence gives no right to take bets from a person in New Zealand. The site is offshore, the company is offshore, and the regulator does not enforce the Gambling Act 2003 or the Racing Industry Act 2020 against it.

Sportaza (not licensed in NZ)

Sportaza’s footer cites an Anjouan licence (ALSI-202606064-FI2) and its terms cite a Tobique licence (number 0000067). Two licences named, neither of them New Zealand. The site runs on standard offshore terms: in-play betting on listed sports, e-sports coverage, casino and live casino alongside the sportsbook.

Telbet (not licensed in NZ)

Telbet describes itself as a crypto casino and sportsbook. Its welcome offer is described as two hundred percent up to one BTC with fifty free spins and a small free-bet component on the Russian-language version of the site. The “free bet” is the standard crypto-sportsbook mix: a bonus credit with turnover attached. There is no New Zealand licence, no New Zealand harm-minimisation framework, no New Zealand complaints route.

Alawin (not licensed in NZ)

Alawin accepts customers aged 18 or over. No licence applicable in New Zealand is named. The site runs as a standard offshore bookmaker with a sportsbook and a casino under one account.

FunBet (not licensed in NZ)

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 around the clock. The catalogue is wide for an offshore brand. The New Zealand situation is the same as the other offshore brands in this set: not licensed to take bets from a person in New Zealand, no New Zealand protection chain.

BetNinja (not licensed in NZ)

BetNinja states that it is licensed to conduct online gaming operations by the Union of the Comoros. There is no New Zealand licence. The site is offshore, with no reach by the Department of Internal Affairs into its operations or its customer service.

22Bet (not licensed in NZ)

22Bet’s home address redirects to a mirror, and the site carries a copyright line and a 21-plus age notice. It names a Curaçao licence (8048/JAZ, holder TechSolutions Group N.V.), which gives no right to take bets from a person in New Zealand.

What the law actually allows

The Department of Internal Affairs is the gambling regulator under the Gambling Act 2003 and monitors compliance with the betting prohibition in the Racing Industry Act 2020 (section 92A). The Racing Industry Act 2020 establishes TAB NZ as the sole betting provider for racing and sports in New Zealand. The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 added section 74AAA, which closes the door on anyone else offering such bets to a person in New Zealand. The law does not geo-block offshore websites — it puts liability on the offshore operator. There is no licence to apply for, because there is only one lawful provider.

What may be bet on under the law is racing and sports betting from TAB NZ. TAB takes fixed-odds and tote (pool) bets; its published betting rules define win, place, each way, quinella, exacta, trifecta, First4, double, treble, daily double, running double, quaddie and Big6, plus the multi family. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 licenses online casino gambling only — TAB New Zealand winning the right to apply for a casino licence does not extend the betting monopoly to casino-style products for offshore operators. 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 player’s position is the line that often gets miswritten. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 (inserted in 2025) says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore betting operator in breach of section 74AAA. The honest framing is: New Zealand law targets the operator; the Department of Internal Affairs warns players of the risks; no published penalty for a player was found. Do not write the offshore route as illegal for the player, and do not write it as legal.

Tax sits on the player side and the operator side. Inland Revenue treats recreational gambling winnings as generally not taxable; prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable. A person who bets as a business is a different case. TAB NZ pays the Problem Gambling Levy at 0.74 percent (in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028). Overseas operators supplying New Zealand residents pay online gambling duty on profits, which has been twelve percent since 1 July 2024 and rises to sixteen percent from 1 January 2027. A duty being payable does not make an offer lawful. The point-of-consumption charge on offshore racing and sports bets ceased on 30 June 2026.

Advertising runs against the Advertising Standards Authority’s Gambling Advertising Code. Ads must not target children (under 14) or young people (14 to under 18) — judged by context, appeal and expected audience, where accurate data exists, with twenty-five percent or more of the audience counting as significant; must not encourage harm; must be truthful and carry terms available. Because only TAB NZ may offer betting here, the Department of Internal Affairs reads the prohibition as covering promoting or taking such bets for another operator. How the DIA treats betting affiliates is not established, which is why nothing on this page invites the reader to sign up with an offshore brand.

Safer gambling in New Zealand

The age for TAB NZ betting is eighteen. Betting under eighteen is an offence under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020 (land-based casinos are twenty — a different rule, never merged). TAB NZ accounts need a verified New Zealand address and ID. TAB NZ lists deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion in its apps, and an exclusion applies across both TAB and Betcha.

There is no single national online-betting exclusion register. The register the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 will require is for online casinos only. TAB NZ must keep the risks of problem and underage gambling minimised under its statutory role and pays the Problem Gambling Levy at 0.74 percent through to 30 June 2028. Help is the free Gambling Helpline on 0800 654 655, the text line 8006, and Safer Gambling Aotearoa.

For an offshore brand, none of that applies. There is no New Zealand harm-minimisation framework, no New Zealand complaints route, no reach by the Gambling Commission. The Department of Internal Affairs warns that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits and may not pay out large wins.

Crypto, anonymity and the offshore brands

The lawful New Zealand product does not run on crypto. TAB NZ’s deposit methods and limits are operator-level and come only from its terms — no statute forces a particular rail. Account opening at TAB NZ requires a verified New Zealand address, which is the answer to “anonymous online betting in New Zealand” before the question gets further: the legal product is the identified product.

Offshore, the picture is different. Telbet describes itself as a crypto casino and sportsbook. Roobet and Thunderpick carry Curaçao licences and accept crypto. The terms describe crypto deposits and crypto-denominated bonus offers. What the law says about crypto or VPN use is the same nothing that the page has already said about TAB NZ’s payment rails: no statute-level rule on either was found. The Department of Internal Affairs warning still stands — offshore operators carry no New Zealand protection, regardless of the payment method.

The cost of a bonus

TAB NZ runs promotions it calls Bonus Cash and the Mega Multi bonus cash back up to NZ$50 in Bonus Cash when a multi of four or more legs falls short by a set number of legs. Both come with terms. The wagering terms on a TAB NZ Bonus Cash deal are TAB NZ’s own; the same terms apply through Betcha. No New Zealand statute caps the size of a bet bonus or the wagering factor behind it, so a punter reading the deal reads only TAB NZ’s terms.

Offshore, the bonus shape is heavier and the terms longer. Roobet, Baji and the other crypto brands describe deposit-match bonus offers in BTC terms — for example, the Telbet welcome offer described as two hundred percent up to one BTC plus free spins, with a free-bet component on the Russian site. SpinBetter lists a sports welcome bonus subject to its terms. Golden Panda’s bonus terms (last updated 31 August 2026) state that bonus funds cannot be used while the player has open casino or sports bets, which is the kind of condition that punches through a punters first read of the offer.

What a free bet is actually worth comes out as an average across many bets at the stated odds — the calculation is value = free-bet amount × (odds − 1) ÷ odds × payout share of that market. The arithmetic comes out below the headline bonus figure every time, because a free bet whose stake is not paid back is worth the upside multiplied by the probability of winning, and the margin inside the price is the tax on that probability. Run the formula on a NZ$10 free bet at $3.00 with a market payout share of ninety-five percent: value = ten times (three minus one) divided by three times zero point nine five, or about NZ$6.33. Headline ten, value six thirty. That gap is the bonus round in numbers.

The cost of clearing a bonus

The cost of clearing a deposit bonus runs through the formula for required turnover. Required turnover equals the bonus base multiplied by the wagering factor. The base is whichever base the operator’s terms name — the bonus alone or the bonus plus the deposit. Bets needed equals the turnover divided by the stake per bet; only bets at or above the minimum price count. The expected cost of clearing the offer is the required turnover multiplied by the margin of the market the offer is being cleared on.

Plug in clean numbers. A NZ$100 deposit with a one hundred percent match gives a NZ$200 bonus base, and a wagering factor of five times gives NZ$1000 of required turnover. Stakes of NZ$10 a bet at minimum odds of $1.50 mean one hundred bets to clear. The market margin of a typical 1X2 football market at about five percent means an expected cost of NZ$50 on the turnover. The bonus headline is NZ$100; the expected cost is NZ$50; the expected net is about NZ$50 over the clearing period. The take is the bookmaker’s margin on the volume you had to bet to get the bonus in the first place. That is the real cost of a “free” bonus.

Mobile and apps

TAB NZ publishes its app “TAB – Racing & Sports Betting” on the New Zealand App Store. It first shipped on 8 September 2014 and carries a seventeen-plus age rating while stating customers must be eighteen or over to bet. The app covers horse and harness racing, rugby union, rugby league and other sports, pre-match and live, with Trackside live race streaming, racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools, and a simplified wallet for deposits and withdrawals. Betcha is the newer TAB NZ face on the App Store, released on 6 August 2024.

The offshore brands reviewed are mobile-friendly in the standard way: a responsive web app on the phone, and in some cases a native app store app. Roobet, Thunderpick and the crypto brands run well in a mobile browser. None of them appear on the New Zealand App Store under a New Zealand publisher. Mobile does not move them inside the law.

What the comparison found

TAB NZ and Betcha are the two lawful online bookmakers for a New Zealand-resident punter. The licensing picture is binary — the rest of the market is offshore, no matter how many licences a brand lists in its footer or its terms. The cost picture is shaped by section 74AAA on the legal side and by the bookmaker’s margin on the price side. The honest read for a punter comparing the two groups is that the legal group pays nothing in hidden transfer costs or chained verification delays, runs on a New Zealand payment rail with an open complaint route, and offers the catalogue New Zealand racing and sport demands. The offshore group offers a deeper catalogue in some sports and accepts crypto, but every dollar of stake and every payout sits on a payment rail that the Department of Internal Affairs warns about, with no New Zealand protection chain if anything goes wrong.

The bonus comparison is the place the cost lands hardest. A TAB NZ Bonus Cash deal reads on TAB NZ’s own terms. A two-hundred-percent-up-to-one-BTC crypto offer with a five-times wagering factor and a fifty-times wagering factor on the free spins reads as the heavier, slower-to-clear product, with the actual value of the free-bet component calculated through the formula above and coming out below the headline. The take is the margin on the volume the bonus forces the punter to bet. Whichever route a punter chooses, what they pay is the price the market charges. The choice is which set of protections the price is paid inside.

Picking the right fit

A punter who wants the New Zealand protection chain (DIA oversight, a complaints path, harm-minimisation tools, helpline and text line) and the racing codes TAB NZ lists with Trackside streaming picks TAB or Betcha — the choice between them is the choice of the app interface, not the operator. A punter who wants esports markets and a catalogue that runs past rugby and racing toward obscure football leagues and BTC-denominated bonuses uses an offshore brand and accepts the warning from the Department of Internal Affairs about credit returns and large-win payouts. A punter who wants both — the legal product’s protection and the offshore product’s depth — has only the legal product available, because the offshore product does not extend to New Zealand-resident customers lawfully.

The economics of both routes come back to the same figure. The bookmaker’s margin is built into every price, regardless of the operator. The required turnover on a bonus is the same multiplication on both sides. The expected cost of clearing an offer is turnover multiplied by market margin on both sides. The thing that changes is who protects the punter when the math goes sideways.

New Zealand betting, in summary

Online betting in New Zealand in 2026 is TAB NZ and its second brand Betcha, by statute and by enforcement. Every offshore brand a punter meets is unlawful for the operator to serve a New Zealand-resident customer. Punters face no published penalty for placing such a bet, but face the Department of Internal Affairs warnings about safeguards and payouts. The legal product runs on a New Zealand payment rail with a New Zealand complaints route, harm-minimisation tools in the app, the helpline on 0800 654 655 and the text line on 8006. The offshore product runs on whatever rail the brand chooses, with whatever protection its own regulator enforces, which is not the Gambling Commission. The bookmaker’s margin is the price on both sides; the question is which protection chain the punter is buying inside.

Frequently asked questions

How can I bet on the Melbourne Cup online?

The Melbourne Cup is a thoroughbred race run in Australia on the first Tuesday of November and sits inside TAB NZ’s racing catalogue. A punter with a TAB NZ or Betcha account picks the Cup from the racing market, chooses a bet type (win, place, each way, quinella, exacta, trifecta, First4) and confirms the stake on the bet slip. Trackside live streaming is built into the TAB app. Offshore brands list Melbourne Cup markets on their racing cards; under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, taking those bets from a person in New Zealand is on the operator, not on the punter, and the DIA’s stated risks still apply.

How do I bet on horses online in New Zealand?

Horse racing betting in New Zealand runs through TAB NZ. Open an account, verify a New Zealand address and identity, deposit through the methods in TAB’s terms, pick a race, choose a bet type (win, place, each way, quinella, exacta, trifecta, First4) and place the stake. TAB lists racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools in its app, alongside Trackside live race streaming. There is no legal route through any other operator for horse racing bets from a person in New Zealand.

How do I bet Lotto online in New Zealand?

Lotto is not part of the sports and racing betting monopoly under the Racing Industry Act 2020. The legal Lotto operator in New Zealand is MyLotto, run by Lotto NZ, with tickets sold online and at retail. Betting on the outcome of a Lotto draw through a TAB NZ or Betcha account is not the same product: TAB NZ’s betting rules govern betting markets, not lottery products. Offshore brands sometimes list “lotto” markets; these are betting markets on lottery draws, not Lotto NZ tickets, and are subject to the section 74AAA position above.

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

TAB NZ, through its two online brands TAB and Betcha. The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA into the Racing Industry Act 2020, in force from 28 June 2025: no person other than TAB NZ may offer racing betting, sports betting or other racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand. There is no licence to apply for and no licence register for bookmakers, because there is only one lawful provider. Both brands share the same wallet, the same markets and the same harm-minimisation tools.

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

Return equals stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A NZ$10 stake at $2.10 returns NZ$21 in total, which is NZ$11 net profit on top of the NZ$10 stake. A combination bet multiplies the legs’ odds into one price: a three-leg multi at $1.50, $2.00 and $3.00 has combined odds of $9.00, and a NZ$10 stake returns NZ$90 on a win. The same return formula holds for a TAB NZ bet, a Betcha bet and any offshore-brand bet. The bookmaker’s margin inside the price is a separate figure described below.

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

The margin is what the bookmaker keeps on average from every unit bet on a market. Across one market, the payout share equals the sum of one divided by each outcome’s decimal odds (one over the price, summed over all outcomes), and the margin equals one minus the payout share. A two-outcome market at $1.91 and $2.01 has a payout share of about 1.0217, so a margin of about 2.17 percent. A lower margin means better combined prices for the punter; the margin is not a fee on any single bet but an average cost baked into every price on that market.

Published by the Nztennisodds team.