DashTickets is a gambling magazine founded in 2009 by Matthew Robert Davey and is operated by Dash Tickets New Zealand Limited. DashTickets focuses on delivering comprehensive online casino reviews to ensure that New Zealanders can make the best choice possible when it comes to gambling.
According to a recent Statista study, online gambling revenue in New Zealand is projected to increase by more than 20% by 2029, with mobile gambling being called the key trend in the country. This ongoing trend has put New Zealanders in a difficult situation. While the local government has established several laws to protect citizens from illegitimate gambling practices, in practice, it doesn’t affect offshore online casinos, which are currently flooding the country’s mobile market.
To address this issue and help New Zealanders gamble on safe terms while playing only high-quality games, DashTickets has been thoroughly testing around four casinos each week for the past few years, resulting in dozens of comprehensive reviews.
“We started DashTickets because we saw that government protections weren’t enough to ensure a good gambling experience for our compatriots. We are not a government entity, so we only have a limited number of ways to change the situation. That’s when we decided that our best approach would be to provide extremely detailed and unbiased reviews, covering every single aspect of a casino from a player’s perspective,” says Mark Dash, editor-in-chief of DashTickets.
“We started DashTickets because we saw that government protections weren’t enough to ensure a good gambling experience for our compatriots. We are not a government entity, so we only have a limited number of ways to change the situation. That’s when we decided that our best approach would be to provide extremely detailed and unbiased reviews, covering every single aspect of a casino from a player’s perspective,” says Mark Dash, editor-in-chief of DashTickets.
“It is no secret that the casino industry suffers from a lack of trust, and that affects gambling publications as well — for a good reason. A lot of publications choose the simplest way and publish PR articles and advertisements, trying to please casinos and earn money off of that. We didn’t want to build another website like that. Our goal is to provide our readers with objective information and ensure that they can play pokies in peace, not having to worry about bad terms or outright scams,” says Mark Dash.
How DashTickets’ reviews ensure better mobile gambling experience for New Zealanders
Amid the lack of proper regulation, DashTickets’ extensive reviews have become an important layer of protection that ensures locals won’t waste their time and money on bad experiences.
“We review everything. We deposit real NZ dollars, we play games for 10 hours, and then we try to withdraw them. We evaluate the UI, the responsiveness of the app, and its overall design. Not only that, we contacted other players to learn more about their experiences. All of that information is put into our final reviews, with the DashScore serving as our simple 0 to 100 metric to qualify whether a particular casino is good or not,” says Sophia Novakivska, author at DashTickets.
The DashScore has become somewhat of a standard for thousands of New Zealanders, and it has reached the point where casinos themselves have to respond to it if they want to stay in the game.
“In some cases, casino owners will write to us to say that they’ve heard our criticism and have fixed some of the things we’ve mentioned in the reviews. Our team updates the reviews regularly to keep them up-to-date, so we will check the casino eventually on our own terms. We love that dynamic — the criticism was never the end goal. It doesn’t matter if a casino improves its practices to deserve a higher DashScore or loses its audience to our review — both scenarios lead to New Zealanders getting a better mobile gambling experience,” says Sophia Novakivska.
In search of new milestones
DashTickets has earned an important place in New Zealand’s gambling industry, but the team behind it doesn’t intend to stop there. While DashTickets will continue to publish its reviews to promote higher standards for local gambling, the magazine also aims to cover a broader field of topics in the future.
“Apart from reviews, we publish market data, reports on legal issues regarding the casino industry in the country, and articles on problem gambling. Our goal is to expand these further and become the go-to resource for any industry-related topics and issues,” says Mark Dash.
Want to connect with DashTickets?
If you’re interested in contacting DashTickets or collaborating with the team as an affiliate partner, reach out at https://dashtickets.nz/contact-us/.
