New Zealand Sees Spike in illegal Sports Betting

As New Zealand moves closer to normality, the government has decided to allow spectators to attend sporting events. This is no doubt a welcome change for sporting fans who have been aching to visit live events for quite some time now.

However, this return also gives an opportunity to online casinos and bookmakers to take advantage of the situation. Government officials and sports administrators have been quick to identify the influence of illegal bookmakers and are moving swiftly to stop such activities.

Since the return of spectators to live events, three separate incidents have been identified where people were caught transmitting information to bookmakers in Asia. The game that got the attention of the officials was an ANZ Premiership game from the Auckland Netball Centre.

Those working for the bookmakers and providing the play by play information are referred to as courtsiders. The real time information provided to bookmakers is what allows them to manipulate the gambling market.

Head of Events for Netball New Zealand, Kate Agnew is convinced that this is the first time such an activity is taking place in New Zealand.

She had the following to regarding preparing for this actuality “We anticipated this because we knew we were one of the few live sports that were allowing audiences in, so this was a possibility that this would occur so we did keep our eyes open for it.”

As per Agnew, the activity has been reported to the police and while this may not be considered a criminal activity it can give birth to additional suspicious activity.

She also added that there not going to be any issues dealing with courtsiders in the future but there needs to be some slack especially for those bookmakers that are doing it the legal way.