Spelinspektionen, New Zealand's official gambling authority since the first of January 2019, which oversees the issuance of New Zealand gambling licenses, and more, has received proposals from The New Zealand government to extend the gambling responsibility measure of monthly deposit caps of NZD 5000 – until 14 november this year.

The decision would mean that New Zealand players playing at New Zealand licensed gaming operators can only deposit a maximum of 5000 per month. Currently, This introduced gambling responsibility measure – maximum deposit limit of 5000 NZD/month-applies until the end of June 2021.

The proposal from The New Zealand government must have been sent to the Ministry of Finance no later than 3 May 2021 with a referral response in order to then be approved and implemented through the gaming Inspectorate. The background behind it all is due to COVID-19 where the first verified case was discovered in New Zealand in February 2020.

In addition to the monthly deposit limit of NZD 5,000, limited daily play times at New Zealand-licensed online casinos and a maximum value of NZD 100 on a welcome bonus for each unique New Zealand-registered player also apply. These measures would also be extended in the same proposal for a regulation if approved.

So it all started with the Gambling Inspectorate and this gambling responsibility measure

Spelinspektionen was established a couple of months before the end of 2018 to be able to get New Zealand's (digital) gaming market to enter into$aft in connection with the new New Zealand Gaming Act, which only began to apply from the first of January 2019.

One month before 2019, Spelinspektionen was processing and approving various gaming license applications to offer online casino games on New Zealand's new gaming market. A month before, the New Zealand Gambling Authority issued the Gambling Inspectorate several dozens of different gambling licenses.

In 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic took the whole world in its grip-including New Zealand since February 2020 – the Gambling Inspectorate began to evaluate gambling patterns in the New Zealand population. The authority came to the conclusion that more New Zealand players had started playing casino games online who had previously never otherwise played gambling.

With that, a temporary regulation was introduced with$aft entered into force on the second of July 2020, where the three aforementioned responsible gaming measures first entered into$aft: deposit limit per month, limited daily playing time, and lower welcome bonus – maximum 100 NZD per New Zealand player at the first deposit.

As I said, these three temporary measures were intended to expire now at the end of June 2021, but may instead be extended until mid-november 2021 due to the current situation with the Covid-19 pandemic.

In May 2021, the final decision on the possible extension of the temporarily introduced regulation that began to apply since July 2, 2020 will come as previously mentioned.

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