How Are Progressive Jackpots Paid Out?
Online casinos are usually joined for people to get involved with a variety of games, from online blackjack and roulette through to slot games aplenty. And it is also the case that many of those casino sites incorporate progressive jackpot slots into their lobbies, too. Accessing such games gives players the chance to hit it big and win massive payouts, thanks to one or more ever-growing jackpot totals. And while standard jackpots in slots can provide nice payouts themselves, progressive jackpots are more often than not on a whole other level.
Let’s say that you play a progressive jackpot slot machine, and you manage to hit that huge payout. How is this all paid out and where from? Do you just receive a lump sum payout from the casino or does it come from the developer responsible for the creation of the game in the first place? Plus, how is the jackpot total created in the first place for you to win it? Let’s take a closer look at how everything associated with progressive jackpots operates.
How Does a Progressive Jackpot Work?
If you do find yourself accessing a progressive slot machine, then you will need to know a bit about how the jackpots are created and what you need to do to win them. A progressive jackpot is an amount that is not fixed at a specific level like a standard jackpot is. Essentially, as its title suggests, it progresses (and therefore increases). How does it progress in the first instance?
All progressive jackpots have a base level (or seed, as it is known) that they start from, and some games have more than one of these involved in them, with each one starting at a different seed level. It is not uncommon to find a progressive jackpot starting from as much as £1,000 and others starting at £100. That is the minimum that you can potentially win from a progressive payout, although it’s usually the case that these jackpots won’t be won at this seed level.
From the base amount, the jackpots will progress in size with every bet that a player enjoying the slot places. And this doesn’t just come from you when you’re spinning its reels, but from everyone who is doing the same thing. The game will take a small percentage of your chosen bet and add this to the progressive pot. This will be something like 0.1% of the wager that you place, which seems like it is a very minimal amount. Yet, if you have hundreds of people playing the same slot machine around the world throughout the day, these jackpot totals can build up in no time at all.
The longer that the progressive jackpot isn’t paid out, the higher it reaches, and this can go into the hundreds of thousands and even into the millions with some games. The Mega Moolah online slot by Microgaming once paid out €8 million via the Tipico mobile casino, making it the largest ever progressive jackpot reward at the time. And that payout came just one month after a €6 million payout had been hit on the same slot machine.
What is it that you need to do to try and win one of these progressive totals? Well, different games have different triggers for these rewards. Some of them will payout completely at random during standard gameplay. Others will require you to spin a win into view on a specific payline with the highest-level symbols. There are games that can trigger a jackpot wheel spinning round, and if you advance all the way through these to the end, then you win a progressive payout. It really depends upon which slot machine you have chosen to play.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the different types of casino progressive jackpot slots.
Types of Progressive Jackpot Slots
The very first area-wide progressive jackpot came about in 1998, thanks to the efforts of Microgaming. And games of this nature have continued to alter and improve ever since then but have not ceased in their abilities to provide huge payouts to players. The releases began as single-game jackpots and then evolved through the years to become jackpots that are funded across an international network of casino sites. The more players getting the chance to participate in these games, the bigger the jackpots have the ability to become. Plus, they are won on a more frequent basis this way.
If you were to play a progressive game like Ozwin’s Jackpots from Yggdrasil, then you would see that the game has its own progressive prize. Essentially, the jackpot is not connected to a network of other games with the same jackpot involved in them. That being said, it is still funded and progresses thanks to the bets placed by players at various online casino sites.
Network jackpots are something different, with multiple game releases all being attached to one and the same progressive amount via a single network. Take a look at the Age of the Gods series of games that have been released by the Playtech brand. Each release features the same progressives within their gameplay that you can win. Regardless of which game from this series that you decide to access, you stand the same chance of triggering the progressive payout. All bets through all Age of the Gods releases contribute to the same jackpot total. Therefore, someone playing the Age of the Gods: Kings of Olympus has the chance to trigger the progressive payout just as much as someone playing the Age of the Gods: Fate Sisters release from Playtech. As long as the slot game is on the same network, then there is the chance of receiving a progressive payout.
As mentioned briefly earlier on, some games now incorporate a selection of progressive jackpots into their gameplay. These are known as tiered progressive jackpots, and sometimes you can find three or four amounts available for winning. They run from the smaller mini jackpots which linger around in the hundreds of pounds zone, up to mega prizes in the thousands category. And grand jackpots often operate as the highest progressive wins in the slots. Of course, with more progressive jackpot opportunities within a slot machine, the more chance you have of winning something beyond the standard game payouts.
One final type of jackpot of note is the timed jackpots. Red Tiger Gaming pioneered its own range of jackpot possibilities, with the daily timed jackpots being one of these. These operate as standard progressive jackpots, but they are guaranteed to provide a payout to a lucky player before a set time each day. Small and medium progressive pots are included in these games, and they always ensure that someone gets a nice reward for their spinning activity.
How Does a Winner Receive The Jackpot Payout?
If you did play a progressive jackpot and won, how would things proceed with the payout for it? Well, this all depends upon the size of the jackpot that you end up winning. In terms of the smaller progressive amounts in the standard hundreds of pounds, this would simply be paid out by the casino that you’re playing the game at. And this would be added to your account in the same way that a standard payout would be.
But what if you hit a huge jackpot reward in the thousands and beyond into the millions? At this time, the software company responsible for the creation of the game and its attached progressive in the first place gets involved. The developer is the one that keeps the small amount taken from each players’ qualifying wager in a separate pot. It is this that helps to build up the progressive from its seed amount. This amount is paid out via the online casino that you have won on the game through.
Let’s say that you’re playing the Netent progressive game Mega Fortune at Admiral Casino as an example. You manage to hit the huge progressive payout during gameplay. It is at this time that Netent will supply the progressive pot that has been collected over the course of the past multiple days, weeks, months or however long since the last jackpot win. Let’s say that that stands at £50,000 for this example. Netent provides this amount via the Admiral Casino, and it is added to your balance.
Is that amount added all at once? Well, this depends entirely upon the game that you have won the progressive jackpot on, as well as the developer and the terms and conditions relating to the online casino and its payout policy. If the software company is providing a huge progressive payout, then it is usually the case that this will all be given to you at once. On the other hand, if it is all paid out via the casino as is the case with lower progressive rewards, then the total may be handed out in batches over the course of several months. And this is another reason why it is ideal to ensure you read the terms and conditions of a casino prior to joining it.
Just using the Admiral Casino once again as an example, the terms and conditions state that the maximum real money winnings that the “company is obliged to pay out” stands at £250,000 per day. However, those same terms state that if you win a progressive jackpot payout, then you will receive the amount that is displayed within the progressive game at the time of your win. Everything will be added to your Admiral Casino account at once.
However, those terms will differ from casino to casino, so be sure that you’re fully aware of how the site you’re registered at operates in terms of progressive payouts.
More Details on Progressive Jackpot Wins
It may seem like progressive jackpot payouts wouldn’t be such a common occurrence, considering they are made up of huge amounts of money. Yet this is not the case at all. Progressive jackpots of varying amounts are paid out on a frequent basis, with games like Mega Moolah Major, Cash Splash, Age of the Gods: Super Power, 777 Deluxe and Holmes Purple Diamond all being games that have provided massive payouts of late.
Those over £1 million pay out every week or two. And it is important to realise that multiple developers provide different progressive slot machines to a variety of online casinos. There is much more access to these types of slots today than there ever has been before in history. And this means that many large wins are being experienced around the world on a daily basis.
One of the largest payouts from an online progressive slot machine game on August 6, 2021. At this time, the mega jackpot involved in the Mega Moolah game from Microgaming paid out £7,230,504 to a lucky player at the Optibet site. And while various significantly lower paying progressive jackpot amounts than this had hit in the weeks prior to this, there were also two large wins recorded in April of 2021. Again, the Mega Moolah game was at the forefront of one of them, rewarding a Belgian gamer with €19,429,358 at Napoleon Casino. Meanwhile, the other came from the WowPot slot game, which paid out £15,183,085 to a British player via the 32 Red Casino.
Mega Moolah is often a slot that provides frequent large payouts to gamers, and this is something that has been the case throughout the years since its release. And the Microgaming brand is responsible for sending the funds from the pot through the respective casino. Mega Fortune from Netent also pops up every so often, while Jackpot Giant and Arabian Nights are also often found to pay out large rewards on a frequent enough basis.
It should be noted that while these games do pay out on a good enough basis, you should never enter into playing them with the idea that you will win a progressive jackpot. Remember that many people around the world are playing these jackpot slots and that you could end up losing a lot of money by solely targeting a progressive payout. Try, instead, to play them for the standard reason of having fun without disrupting your bank balance. If a progressive win comes during gameplay, then this will just be the cherry on top of the icing on the cake!
