Four Influencers in New Zealand Fined for Promoting SpinBet

SpinBet, a pretty young bookmaker with great plans and ambitions, entered the New Zealand sports betting industry in 2021.

Despite starting out in a fiercely competitive environment, it quickly made a name for itself through its aggressive microtargeting.

SpinBet offered a lot of great discounts for new bettors, excellent odds on various matches, especially those in rugby and cricket markets, as well as support for a wide variety of payment methods. This is something that appealed to New Zealand audiences a lot.

Unfortunately, the local regulators weren’t as thrilled. They were naturally distrustful of a new sports betting platform making such a splash, to the point where they fined 4 well-known influencers for marketing SpinBet via their content.

Who Were Involved

Four New Zealand influencers were involved in a scandal with SpinBet. Let’s get to know them better to understand what happened and why.

Millie Elder-Holmes is a social media influencer with over 100,000 followers on Instagram.

She specializes in lifestyle, wellness and beauty content, posting a lot about herself, including her hobbies and preferences. When she discovered SpinBet, she made a couple of posts advertising it.

Then there was Calen Morris, an ex-gang member who decided to develop his social media personality and found a lot of interested fans.

He posted pretty edgy content, and some of it featured the discounts and offers from SpinBet bookmaker.

Billy Whaanga and Tuhira Wana were the remaining two influencers who were fined by New Zealand authorities for promoting SpinBet.

Since both of them were using nicknames, there are few details available about their channels.

What we do know is that all four influencers focused on different types of content, so it’s difficult to say if SpinBet has actually paid them to market its services or they decided to do it because they actually liked it as genuine sports bettors.

What Took Place

In September 2025, New Zealand authorities announced that they were fining the four people mentioned above for making SpinBet promotional posts.

Millie Elder-Holmes was fined NZ$30,000, meaning that she engaged in advertising multiple times. Calen Morris and Billy Whaanga got a fine of NZ$20,000, while Tuhira Wana had to pay NZ$15,000.

SpinBet was fined as well by the Department of Internal Affairs of New Zealand. It had to pay NZ$60,000 for breaking the sports betting promotion laws in the country.

Now, the question is, why did it happen, considering that it was impossible to prove that SpinBet paid these influencers a cent? Can these fines be called justified?

Why SpinBet and Influencers Were Fined

New Zealand has a special Gambling Act 2003, which prohibits any marketing materials related to bookies that haven’t received the required local-level license.

This is a rather murky area, as plenty of casinos with licenses from other countries are promoting their services without any problems.

In this case, though, both the influencers and SpinBet received takedown notices warning them to stop the marketing.

The lack of immediate compliance resulted in stricter punishment than the parties would have sustained otherwise.

What Now?

What does this situation mean for SpinBet? The platform is still active in New Zealand, so people can keep placing their bets and claiming their winnings.

However, its marketing efforts have died down, so to stay updated about SpinBet’s offers and bonuses, people need to stick to overviews and facts posted on bethere website

The influencers themselves are being monitored, and in case of any further breaches, they will be issued even more severe fines.

The sports industry in New Zealand is full of unexpected turns and complex legal issues: if you want to understand them better, take a look at this website and check back from time to time.

Knowledge is the most powerful weapon, and by cultivating it, it’s simple to avoid problems like the ones SpinBet faced.