Jackpots — Fixed, Progressive & Must-Drop

A jackpot is a top prize sitting on top of the normal pay table. Fixed jackpots pay a set amount; progressive jackpots grow from a slice of every bet until won; must-drop / daily jackpots are guaranteed to pay before a time or value; networked progressives pool bets across many casinos into life-changing sums (e.g. Mega Moolah). Because the jackpot is funded by the players, it comes out of the base-game RTP.

A fixed jackpot pays a set top prize. A progressive takes a small percentage of every wager — the 'contribution' — and adds it to a growing pot that resets when it is won. The bigger and more networked the pot, the smaller the base game's non-jackpot RTP tends to be, because more of every bet is diverted into the jackpot.

'Must-drop' or 'daily' jackpots are guaranteed to be awarded before a deadline or a ceiling value — for example, 'drops before £10,000' or 'by midnight'. As a pot nears its trigger it becomes better value for the player pool as a whole, but any individual outcome is still random and rare.

Networked jackpots pool contributions from the same game across many operators, which is how they reach eight figures — Mega Moolah is the classic example, with record multi-million payouts. The chance of hitting is astronomically small: the pot is enormous precisely because millions of losing spins feed it.

Every jackpot is funded by the contribution skimmed from bets, so a jackpot slot's headline RTP includes an amount you will almost certainly never receive. The base-game (non-jackpot) return is lower than the total RTP suggests — the difference is sitting in a pot that one lucky player eventually takes.