The amount spent on gambling last year rose by $19 million compared with the previous year.
Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
About $2.1 billion was gambled in the 2013-14 financial year, figures from the Department of Internal Affairs showed.
Spending on racing and sports betting rose by 5.6 percent, while lottery spending was up by 7.2 percent.
That was in line with the trend of the past two decades, during which the money spent on those forms of gambling has increased by more than 50 percent.
By contrast, gambling in casinos and on pub and club pokies fell by two percent.
Pokies were still the top-grossing form of gambling, with more than $800 million being spent.
About a quarter of the revenue from gambling expenditure went to community and racing projects.