Up to fifteen licences, one brand apiece, and a queue that has now shut. New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs is running entry to its online casino market in three stages: expressions of interest, a competitive auction, then the applications themselves. Its guidance for providers puts the interest window at 17 July to 14 August, the auction in September, applications in October, and no more than three licences in any one hand. Its overview says the regime is phased and not expected to be fully operational until 2027.
None of that is the number that matters at the reader’s end.
The ceiling sits on the bonus, not on the multiplier
The binding text is regulation 13(1)(d) of the Online Casino Gambling Regulations 2026, made 2 June and in force since 3 July. It sets two ceilings, not one. An inducement requiring no spend of the customer’s own funds is capped at $100, flat. One that requires a spend is capped at the lesser of $100 and 200 percent of the deposit or bet — per deposit or per bet placed, not against a session or lifetime total. The Cabinet minute of 19 November 2025, where the number entered circulation, agreed only the second test.
Read it as an instrument, not a headline. Most bonus regulation this publication has covered works on the denominator — the wagering multiplier that decides what an offer costs to clear, the lever the British reform programme reached for. New Zealand went at the numerator instead, capping the size of the offer.
Round numbers, in New Zealand dollars and nobody’s published terms. On the spend limb, deposit $40 and the 200 percent test binds at $80; deposit $500 and the flat $100 binds. Where no spend is required, $100 is the ceiling regardless. A value ceiling is invisible to the small depositor and decisive for the large one, presumably the point.
The same instrument carries the conduct rules. An advertisement offering an inducement must not state or imply that it is free if the customer has to bet, pay or stake anything to get it, and must not be likely to deter someone from closing an account, withdrawing winnings or ending a session.
This piece last flagged the cap as Cabinet policy awaiting a binding text. That caveat is spent, and the two-limb reading was right. Regulation 13(1)(b) adds the term that bites at the cashier: winnings from an inducement must be withdrawable without any requirement to gamble them on that platform. None of it reaches a player outside New Zealand.
The design still travels. A value ceiling and a multiplier ceiling do different jobs: one limits what may be offered, the other what accepting it costs. Whichever arrives in your market, the sentence that prices you sits in today’s terms. Settle the deposit budget before the offer is on screen — a bonus is a price adjustment on play you had already priced, never a reason to buy more.