New Zealand punters frustrated as TAB website and app crashes for hours

TAB said the significant degradation in its services was caused by an issue within its databases.

New Zealand sports bettors were left stranded after the TAB website and mobile app went down for hours on Saturday.

One person told the Herald he spent 45 minutes trying to place a bet before eventually giving up.

He said an error message kept popping up whenever he refreshed the page and tried again.

“It’s the second major outage since international wagering giant Ladbrokes bought the TAB,” he said.

“Saturday is the busiest betting day of the week. It’s unacceptable and the equivalent of the Lotto site going down for hours on a Saturday afternoon.”

TAB operators Entain Australia and New Zealand managing director Cameron Rodger said they experienced some significant issues this afternoon when the TAB website and mobile app became unavailable for an extended period.

“This significant degradation in our services was caused by an issue within our databases. Our teams worked to restore service as soon as possible and the site was fully operational again by 4pm,” Rodger said.

“We are continuing to work well towards our migration of our digital channels to a new platform later this year, which will remove reliance on external providers, and will give us significantly better control over our digital operations.

“This planned migration remains our top priority, and today’s issue just reconfirms that priority.”

Entain is an international betting agency that owns brands such as Bwin, Ladbrokes, and SportingBet.

It took over the running of the New Zealand TAB in the middle of last year.

Former Racing Minister Kieran McAnulty approved the deal that saw Entain take over the day-to-day running of New Zealand’s only betting agency for 25 years.