Entain update

[curious]

Welcome to the Entain Edition for August 2026

Firstly, let me introduce myself, having taken over the reins as Managing Director New Zealand from Sam Moncur. Sam officially farewelled Entain last week following a combined 13 years with Entain, TAB NZ, RITA and the NZ Racing Board. He leaves with our best wishes and deepest respect for everything he has delivered during his outstanding journey with the four organisations.

Michael Guerin caught up with me when I was appointed to the MD NZ role, but in short, I grew up on the North Shore, attended the University of Auckland, before spending almost 20 years in Australia.

I moved back to New Zealand with my family two years ago having joined Entain in 2023, and am really energised about continuing to build on the progress Entain has made in the first three years of the partnership.

Anyone with even a passing interest in the New Zealand racing industry will know it's been a noisy few months, with the TAB NZ Racing Advisory Committee report released in June, the release of Project Stamina in late July, and warnings of structural deficits.

Read the headlines and you'd think racing was facing an insurmountable crisis.

It isn't. The case for optimism is at least as strong as the case for alarm. Even after the Minimum Guarantee period ends in 2028, the industry is much better off than the future it was facing in early 2023. Distributions were $125m in FY23, climbing to ~$198m by financial year 2028 via Entain.

The Advisory Committee is right that FY29 dips without the guarantee; our modelling shows ~$175m. But that trough is still 40% above FY23, and the trend resumes upward, back to ~$195m by FY2033 – 56% up on the counterfactual of 2023. That's not so much of a funding cliff, as a step down to a much higher permanent floor, with years to plan for it.

Many pieces of the wagering puzzle are falling into place – you'll read more about the success of the World Cup later in this edition – but there’s still improvement to be made, especially in the domestic racing sector where about a quarter of our NZ business is drawn from.

A sustainable footing isn't a stretch. Racing supports more than 50 tracks with administration and infrastructure costs that have outgrown activity. Right-sizing that footprint cuts cost, and fixes knock-on issues like meeting abandonments, and the Advisory Committee reached the same conclusion. The good news is this is a solvable problem.

This is about making those changes that will unlock capital that is doing very little today. Add TAB NZ's own reserves of over $200m, and this is a sector with real financial firepower.

Sir Peter Vela summed it up perfectly recently when he said: “New Zealand racing has not struggled because people don’t care. It has struggled to reform because the structure asks each part of the industry to look after its own, and leaves no one accountable for the health of the whole”.

Hard decisions still remain to ensure the health of the whole. There have been extremely encouraging steps made in the last two weeks, but for too long in New Zealand, those hard decisions have been put to one side, and now is the time to make them.

For a summary of the present and future, I would encourage – if you haven’t already watched – to view the two special episodes of the Guerin Report from earlier this month – the first on the racing code funding discussion, and the second on Project Stamina. 

Please share or forward this newsletter to anyone in the industry who you think might like to read this. They can sign up to receive the Entain Edition directly by contacting communications@entaingroup.co.nz. 
Thanks for reading.

Chris Haigh,
Managing Director - New Zealand
Entain Australia and New Zealand      

 

 

[curious]

It isn't. The case for optimism is at least as strong as the case for alarm

Hmmm. Even money? That's encouraging.