The big punt: Inside the complicated history of sports betting in New Zealand
In the first of a four-part series, Gregor Paul looks at New Zealand’s complicated history with sports betting.
Sports betting in New Zealand had humble beginnings. In the 1830s, horses would be raced, mostly alongthe beach, with opportunistic bookmakers offering interested punters the chance to have a flutter.
New Zealand was, perhaps unsurprisingly, much like the UK in that there was a significant element of the populace that wanted to gamble and so an illicit industry developed around horse racing.
It was a chance to make money, but just as importantly, it was something to do.
And in time, just like the UK, the industry became regulated and structured, primarily because the government realised it was missing out in a major revenue stream.
The TAB was launched in October 1950 and by 1952, there were 167 branches around the country.
In 1965, the TAB posted an annual profit of more than $1 million for the first time, and by 1970 its total revenue was $80m, signalling that gambling had become big business in New Zealand.
But where New Zealand differed from the UK, was that its gambling industry remained entirely focused and restricted to horse racing until the mid-1990s.
The UK, and pretty much the rest of the Western world, had long been able to bet on a wide array of sports, in different ways.
For decades, the UK had the enormously popular football pools, which enabled people to try to predict a specific number of games that would end in a scoring draw.
New Zealand, though, only passed legislation to allow fixed odds betting on sports in 1996, which coincided with rugby turning professional.
And perhaps, not surprisingly, it was a test match between the All Blacks and Wallabies in Wellington on July 6 which was the first occasion sports betting was legal in New Zealand.
Grant Nisbett, the iconic Sky rugby commentator, who worked at the TAB for 24 years as a sports media liaison, says: “I’d just joined Sky and I saw this Wellington-based job advertised and I thought I could probably do it as well as my stuff at the weekends for Sky,” he says.
“I was there to promote sports betting to the news media and answer questions and the very first sports betting game was the Bledisloe Cup test at Athletic Park where the All Blacks nailed the Wallabies in atrocious conditions.
“I can remember they were out selling bets to spectators at Athletic Park. For first try scorer certainly, and the first try scorer, as he always seemed to be, was Michael Jones.”
As Nisbett recalls, sports betting drew a new and different type of gambler to the TAB. And so too did it perhaps validate betting as a valid recreational pursuit among a wider swathe of the populace.
Rugby was the national sport and being able to bet on the All Blacks brought gambling to a whole new audience.
“People were probably betting before 1996, not necessarily with dollars but a pint here and a jug there sort of thing,” says Nisbett.
“A lot of the people who now bet on sports probably never used to bet. They didn’t have an outlet. I don’t know what the figures would be, but I would imagine it has dragged in a whole new generation of punters.”
And because sports betting changed the perception of gambling to some degree, it coincided with, or perhaps it would be more accurate to suggest it was the catalyst for, a major rebrand of the TAB.
This was the pre-internet and pre-mobile phone era and back then, there were significantly more TAB retail branches than there are now.
But it was also true that back then, says Nisbett, the non-gambler may have found the TAB intimidating, largely because they weren’t familiar with how betting worked and what the process involved.
“Some people were probably afraid of walking into TAB agencies because they weren’t exactly sure what was going to happen next,” says Nisbett.
“The best example of that would be Melbourne Cup where someone who didn’t bet decided they would, but would then realise they weren’t sure what to do and were probably reluctant to ask.
“You walk into a TAB these days and there are big posters of rugby players, cricket players all sorts of options available on sport, so I think the two went hand-in-hand – the launch of sports betting and the rebrand of the TAB started together.”
Initially, about 50 per cent of all sports betting in New Zealand was focused on rugby.
Other sports such as league and football were also popular but the range of options was still limited because the TAB had to strike agreements with each of the sporting codes before it could offer people the chance to bet.
