Blackrush turned up out of nowhere. anyone know if its worth moving to

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Kiwivin

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new casino called Blackrush appeared about a week and half ago, Entain brand. no announcement no ads noting, it just exists

i can load it fine from Auckland but a mate in Melbourne cant get in at all. couple of the news bits say it needs a NZ vpn which confused me till i worked out thats for everyone else not us

question is whether there's any point moving. ive been on offshore sites for years and they've been alright. is this the start of the licensed thing or just another site
 
it's a soft launch, not a market entry. the timing isn't a coincidence either, the licence auction ran on 29 september and blackrush showed up right after
two things. it's on entain's electraworks gibraltar licence, not a new zealand one. and it isn't on entain's global platform, it's running on the same system as foxyspins, which tells you they built it as a separate thing they can bolt onto a licence later
entain have said they want three. three is the cap
 
No. And neither is anything else - not one operator holds a DIA licence today. Anything calling itself a licensed New Zealand casino right now is lying to you. Since it trips everyone up here is the sequence:
  • 1 May - Act came into force
  • 8 July - minimum standards regulations took effect
  • 17 July to 14 August - expressions of interest
  • 29 September - auction
  • this month - winners pay and file the actual application
Winning the auction only buys you the right to apply. The application wants a business plan and four separate strategies - advertising, consumer protection, harm prevention, compliance. Any one of them can sink it.
 
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1 december is when sites that never entered the process have to stop serving us. thats not the same as the market opening
the ones already here before may can keep going till then under the transitoin. after that its licence holders only, except there's a backstop in 2027 for anyone still waiting on an application
i've seen 1 june 2027 and 1 july 2027 both written down and i genuinely don 't know which is right
 
right so the practical question stays. my current site was here before may so its fine till december at least

what's actually better about a licensed one
 
i actually sat down and read the minimum standards last month because i was sick of guessing, so here's what you get and what it costs you
get:
complaints handled here instead of an email adress in curacao. self exclusion has to be actioned inside 24 hours. you can set your own deposit spend and session limits and they have to honour them. breaks in play, time outs. and the act covers any operator letting a kiwi gamble no matter where they're registered, which is the bit that actually matters
costs:
credit cards gone completly. one account per operator so no opening a second when the first limits you. and a popup every 60 minutes of continuous play asking how you're getting on, which you'll want to throw your phone at by the second week

there's 16% duty on their revenue plus a 1.24% problem gambling levy on top. none of that comes out of anyone's bonus budget by magic
 
60min continuous and you get a message asking if you're ok meanwhile you can sit at a machine in a pub in hamilton for 9h and the only person who talks to you is the one bringing the drinks
 
online side gets the rulebook because it's new and it's legible. the machines have been there forever and nobody wants that fight
doesn't make the online rules wrong. just means that's where the attention went
 
The credit card ban is the thing that'll change daily life most, and not in the direction people expect.
Take cards out and bank-push methods get more important, not less. The catch is that bank-push is usually one directional. It moves money in and nothing comes back the same way, so your withdrawal has to route somewhere else and that's where the delay lives.

Before anyone switches, check what a site pays out *with*, not what it takes in. Those are two different lists and operators are much louder about the second.
 
that's poli here and its been flaky as anything this year anway. about one in three attempts just hangs and i end up on the debit card instead
and half the time the bank knocks that back too
 
its not just you, polis got worse across the board and thats partly why people drifted to crypto. banking is seperate tho. some of the nz banks flag gambling merchant codes and decline at their end, nothing to do with the casino. my mum manages to block hers by accident about once a month
 
Nobody is going to say the obvious thing so I will. Advertising an online casino to New Zealanders has been illegal since 1 May. No licences have been issued. And Entain has put a brand live and let it be written up in every trade publication on earth.
That is advertising. The penalty runs to five million dollars and I would bet the house nothing happens.
 
trade coverage isn't advertising and you know it isn't. a journalist found the site, entain didn't send out a press release
the harder question is whether a geo-fenced soft launch with no marketing counts as offering gambling to nzrs before you're licensed. i don't know the answer to that one and i'd like to. it's the kind of thing that gets argued about rather than enforced
 
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