The impact of TAB New Zealand and Entain Australia’s groundbreaking deal

A year has passed since the 25-year strategic partnership between TAB New Zealand and Entain Australia began. Officially launched on June 1, 2023, the alliance has enabled financial uplift for the three New Zealand racing codes and 38 National Sporting Organisations, provided immediate funding boosts, including a $15 million one-off uplift for sports organisations and a $500,000 investment in women’s sport, alongside a $5 million commitment to harm minimisation. One year on, Luke Kirkness sits down with Entain New Zealand managing director Cam Rodger to discuss the deal.

How is turnover?

We’ve been buoyed by what we’ve seen with just the small tactical things we’ve tried to date. The big one that the public would have noticed is our investment into The Everest campaign with I Wish I Win and also with the Karaka Millions. What we proved with those two events was if you put strong focus marketing around major racing events, you can uplift them. To put that in context, our target for The Everest was to get a 40 per cent uplift and that was a 100 per cent uplift. Our future in this market in terms of success is dependent on raising the profile of those events because it lifts everything else.

How has the past year been?

It feels a bit like a lifetime ago. We wanted to launch a new brand or refresh the TAB brand, which we’ve done. The other big job was to move our customers on to the new bidding platform. The other big one was to invest deeply into sports and racing in New Zealand, and we’re happy with how that’s going.

Tell me about the new betting app you’re developing ...

We’re launching a new app for a new brand later in the year – it’ll have a new name. It will be a whole sort of different look and feel from the TAB. We’re excited about that because it gives, we think, that that group of customers that maybe TAB isn’t the brand for them or doesn’t resonate with them, it gives them a different option, something that they feel like they can have an identity and connect to. It will, you know, give different looks and different offers for customers.

The last piece that will sit across both of them is “mates mode” or social betting, something I’m really excited about integrating into our way for people to connect and bet together socially. We want to see people betting at amounts that are enjoyable to them and fun social betting is the way of the future.

Entain New Zealand managing director Cam Rodger at Ellerslie Racecourse. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Why the changes to the app and Trackside?

The TAB, under its old settings, was using an outsourced system to provide its tech. It was a smart decision at the time because we needed to find scale, we needed an operator that had that sort of global reach for development but the challenge with that is that you’re not in control of the product in the way that you might want. We needed to bring that back onshore by partnering with Entain and the whole premise was that they’ve got a strong app and website and market that we knew New Zealanders would love..

The reason for [revamping Trackside] is just recognition that it is the shopfront window to the sport of racing. If we want to create new fans of racing, just showing back-to-back races on Trackside 1 and 2 is not going to do it. We invested early to put it on the free-to-air satellite to just give broader access to all New Zealanders and look so far it’s working really well.

What’s happening in the harm minimisation space?

There were kind of two parts to it. There were the bits and pieces that came with direct investment – that involved things like getting facial recognition widespread across our retail network and also research that’s specific to sports and race betting, you know, not just mixed in with other forms of gambling, which are important.

Every customer should have a deposit limit too. You know, there’s nothing wrong with that. You should always have one in place. Giving customers more and more flexibility to block certain markets on certain days of the week so that they can sort of use the products in a way that’s safe for them. I think if customers have a look at what’s available, they’ll be impressed with how that’s all shaped up.

There’s been a lot of match-fixing recently...

We’ve been sheltered from it in New Zealand a little bit in the sense that there haven’t been many issues arising but isn’t because we haven’t been looking. Reports are generated and put forward every day that identify instances of things that need to be looked at. It’s not to say that there’s anything untoward going on and I think the reason there haven’t been many issues in New Zealand is that we have a relatively clean sports and racing environment dow.

You started 15 years ago as a tote operator. How important is retail to the TAB and what’s its future?

We think that retail is a really important channel because it’s ... an important social circle for so many people. Some of our most passionate customers love being there, love interacting with each other. We want to foster that and help that to grow and find ways to bring a new generation of customers into that same world because, you know, right now it’s aging and there’s not a great reason for new customers to step into it. But if we can give them an offering that they love, then we can recreate that experience, which would be great.

Luke Kirkness is an Online Sports Editor for the NZ Herald. He previously covered consumer affairs for the Herald and was an assistant news director in the Bay of Plenty. He won Student Journalist of the Year in 2019.