How Progressive Jackpots Work in Online Casinos

Are you looking to play slot for big wins? Read our full guide on how progressive jackpots work. Featuring Mega Moolah & Age of the Gods! (Photo by Jan Vašek on Pixabay)

Progressive jackpot slots regularly hit the casino news headlines for turning average casino players into overnight millionaires. Just check our casino jackpot page or keep an eye on our regular ‘Casino Games News’ for some of the highest jackpot payouts as well as jackpot news.

There are also plenty of progressive jackpots that are the unsung heroes of iGaming. They don’t make millionaires out of players, but they regularly pump out jackpot wins. Networks like 888 Casino and Red Tiger Gaming are the most well-known for their hourly and daily jackpots giving players a welcomed windfall of cash into their casino account that could be 3-digits to 5-digits.

What’s more, is all the money won from progressive jackpots is yours to keep. There are no wagering requirements or withdrawal limits, so you can get your hand on your winnings almost immediately. When you win a progressive jackpot, it is not the casino that pays you, it is the software provider because this is the company that owns the progressive jackpot network. For example, the person that won that mesmerising € 19.4 million on Absolootly Mad Mega Moolah slot received the winnings directly from Microgaming within in 30 days of winning.

What are Progressive Jackpots?

The jackpot on any slot is the highest paying win possible. On a nonprogressive jackpot slot, this is usually a pre-defined/fixed win. For instance, in Vegas you will see slots that show the jackpot as $ 3 million. All you need to do is trigger that jackpot, and you win the fixed jackpot prize. After that win, the jackpot will still be $ 3 million. Conversely, a progressive jackpot is not fixed, and instead, it just keeps on rising in value.

To give you a real-life example, let’s take the world-famous Microgaming Mega Moolah progressive jackpot network. When someone lands the Mega Moolah jackpot, they win whichever amount it showed at the time. In April 2021 that was € 19.4 million, in January 2019 CA$ 20 million, € 18.91 million in 2018, and £ 13.21 million in October 2015. These are just examples of some of the biggest wins. More recently someone won a € 3.9 million jackpot playing Mega Moolah Goddess. When someone wins, the jackpot ‘resets’ to € 1.5 million (at the time of writing this guide).

The two key things you will notice from what you have read here is the jackpot is never the same and the jackpot can rise well beyond the ‘reset’. What happens is, every time a player spins the reels, i.e., bets on a Mega Moolah progressive jackpot slot, a percentage of the bet is contributed to the jackpot. And as there are so many players online playing these slots, the jackpot has grown to record numbers.

As for when the slot pays out, well that’s just down to the laws of probability and variance. Going back to the Mega Moolah slot, some say the odds of winning are 1 in 24 million spins. Every spin then has a 1 in 24 million chance of hitting the jackpot, which the same can be said for a single dice. It has a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a 6, yet 6 can roll in 3 times in a row. OK so the odds are much different, compared to the million to 1 odds of a jackpot slot, but you get the picture.

In fact, Microgaming’s WowPot jackpot network did just that after not paying out for over a year, suddenly 2 people hit the jackpot in the same week. The first person landed € 17.5 million, while the second winner a week later won € 2.03 million because the WowPot resets to € 2 million by default. It just goes to show that even with multi-million to one odds, a jackpot can pay multiple times.

Differences between non-progressive jackpots and progressive jackpots:

• Non-progressive Jackpots have a fixed value, progressive jackpots are constantly growing
• progressive jackpots are a little harder to win
• progressive jackpots enable significantly higher profits

Where to find progressive jackpots: Progressive jackpots are not unique to online slots or slots in land-based casinos. You will also find them on Roulette tables – for example, Age of the Gods Live Roulette, Live Caribbean Stud Poker, and CyberStud. You will also find bingo, lotto, scratch card, and video poker progressive jackpots across the iGaming sphere.

What types of progressive jackpots are there in online casinos?

The way a progressive jackpot works is the same everywhere so far as it keeps on rising until it pays out, then it resets, and the coffers start to build up again. That being said, there is no one size fits all progressive jackpot. Different software providers use the progressive jackpot system in diverse and interesting ways, and we are going to explain these in the box below.

The Biggest Progressive Jackpot Wins Come from Pooled Networks

Inevitably, the largest wins will always come from jackpot networks with multiple games attached to the progressive jackpot. Above, that is the Multi-Level/Pooled Progressive Jackpots networks. In comparison to a stand-alone progressive jackpot, which needs players to specifically play its slot to build up its jackpot, the pooled jackpot has 2, 3, 4, 10, 20 or more slots capturing players’ attention. That means the jackpot can get pretty high quickly while the more spins there are churned out due to a large volume of players, the higher the chance probability of taking its course and dropping the top jackpot payout. The result is fast-growing progressive jackpots into 6-, 7-, or 8-digit numbers, and the jackpot pays out regularly.

• Age of the Gods: One of the most well-known because there are more than 20 video slots connecting to the jackpot. There is also a live roulette table and other games all connecting to this jackpot. This is from the Playtech jackpot network.
• Mega Moolah: Another well-known network. The Mega Moolah slot was stand-alone, but now Microgaming has added more slots including Mega Moolah Immortal Romance, Atlantan Treasures, and Mega Moolah Goddess.
• WowPot: A brand new progressive jackpot network from Microgaming that came around in 2020. At the time of writing this progressive jackpot guide, it has paid out €17.53 million on the Book of Atem, €2.03 million Sherlock & Moriarty, and €1.12 million Sisters of Oz: WowPot.

3 Largest Jackpot Networks: These are the 3 largest pooled jackpot networks out there in terms of payouts. There is also Red Tiger, but as the network concentrates on daily and hourly jackpots, the jackpot amounts are not that large in comparison to the above 3 networks. Also, take note that these networks have 4 different jackpots too so they are always dropping in cash wins on players.

Jackpots that Payout Regularly

There are several reasons why some progressive jackpot slots pay out more regularly than others. It could be a stand-alone progressive jackpot slot or a jackpot network that seems to always appear in the casino iGaming news headlines for paying out.

• Jackpot RTP: The developer may set the reels in such a way that the Jackpot pays out more often. I.e., there is more chance of triggering the jackpot with the way the reels are set up. A high RTP for the jackpot means it will pay more regularly. Obviously, a low RTP means it will take some time for the jackpot to hit.
• Number of players: The more players playing the slot, the more spins there are. With more spins, the inevitable is going to happen, and that is the jackpot will fall because probability demands this. Therefore, the most popular slots payout the jackpot faster.
• Multiple Casinos: For a slot to be popular, it usually needs to be available at multiple online casinos. It’s really just common sense. If the slot is only available at 1 or 2 casinos, it won’t have a huge audience, but if it is available at 100 casinos, then it has a huge audience to appeal to.
• Hourly/Daily: The hourly and daily jackpots rely on the number of players playing in the slots entered into the jackpot pool to build a higher jackpot amount. However, no matter how low or high that jackpot is, the slot will always pay it out within the hour or 24-hour periods.

Weighing up jackpots: There are multiple factors that decide how large a progressive jackpot can grow, and how regularly it will pay. A popular stand-alone slot like NetEnt’s Arabian Nights may pay out €-£-$ 50,000 to 200,000 max, but payout every couple of weeks, while you could also earn that from the Mega Mega Moolah network’s Minor or Mega jackpot which are the jackpots below the WowPot/Major jackpot payout. In the end, keep an eye out for the jackpots and when they pay, and you’ll get a feel for how often they pay.