What are the biggest progressive online slot payouts in history?

It is testament to how popular online slot gaming has become that it is now incredibly easy to check what the largest ever win on an online slot game is.

The Guinness Book of World Records, the veritable tome of the mighty and magnificent, now has its own category for this and if you were to check on the official website, then the biggest ever winner is still listed as Jon Heywood's incredible Mega Moolah win in October 2015.

Official Guinness World Record - £13,209,300 Jackpot won by Jon Heywood

Prior to Mr Heywood's win, the Mega Jackpot had not been won since the previous April and as we rolled into October 2015, the jackpot was creeping beyond the £13 million mark in Mr Heywood's preferred currency, the British Pound.

Playing at Betway Casino, Mr Heywood (watch video) decided to enjoy a few spins on the Mega Moolah slot for the minimum bet amount of 0.25 per spin. After playing for around 20 minutes or so, Mr Heywood spun the reels and in doing so triggered the Mega Moolah Jackpot Bonus Wheel.

Instead of landing the Mini, Minor or even the Major jackpot prizes, Mr Heywood watched as the wheel spun round, landing in that single white sector and in doing so, netting him what is still officially the largest ever progressive jackpot prize win according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

However, there have been some other notable wins on the Mega Moolah slot that have come close to usurping Mr Heywood from the coveted position as the biggest online slot jackpot winner in history.

A trio of big wins follows

Incredibly, after Mr Heywood's win, we saw a trio of wins all over the 10 million mark, although the currencies that these jackpots were won in meant that, when exchanged into other currencies to compare against the record, they fell well short of the required amount.

First up, we had one winner of NZ$10.144 million on June 17 2016, eight months after Mr Heywood's win and then this was followed up by two jackpot triggers in Canadian Dollars, both of around CA$11.6 million, the first on 28^th August 2016 and the second on 5, November 2016.

However, given the exchange rate, while these were large wins in terms of numerical value, when you compare the wins across the different currencies, Mr Heywood's record remained firmly intact and it would be some time after that before it was seriously challenged again.

A possible challenger?

After a New Zealand dollar winner in June 2018, nobody had won the Mega Moolah jackpot prize as we headed into September of that year. At that time, the jackpot had climbed beyond 18 million and as we headed towards the end of the month, it was just shy of reaching the 19 million mark, the highest amount ever recorded in the Mega Moolah game at that time.

However, it would not reach that 19 million mark as on the 28^th September, one anonymous player landed an incredible prize of €18,910,668. Just over a Million more than the Euro equivalent of Mr Heywood's win.

So, was this a new world record? Well Guinness have not officially updated their records and the reason for that may well be that the values of the win in both the Pound and US Dollar did not both exceed the amount that Jon Heywood won back in 2015, chiefly due to the fluctuations in the value of each currency when compared to the other.

Even so, this is a huge win, but there was an even bigger surprise awaiting Mega Moolah players at the start of 2019.

Major threshold breached and the first 20 million winner

After the massive Euro winner in September 2018, the Mega Moolah jackpot started to climb again and by January 2019, it had broken new ground again, first passing the 19 million mark during the month and then towards the end of January, it crashed through the 20 million mark for the very first time.

This ensured that the next winner would be the first 20 million jackpot player and if that player was to win in Pounds or Euros, we could see a new World Record.

On the 30^th January one player did trigger the jackpot prize, winning 20,059,287, but in Canadian Dollars, which meant that the comparative value of the jackpot win ensured that Mr Heywood's place in the record books has remained.

This was followed by a win of US$12,945,688 in March later in 2019, but there has been no jackpot winner of over 9 million since that win up to January 2020.

With the imminent general release of the Wheel of Wishes slot, with its 2 million seeded top Wowpot progressive jackpot prize, could we see these records smashed in the future? It is difficult to tell until we have seen the game in action, but the likelihood is with a much larger seeded prize pool, and assuming roughly the same frequency of pay-outs, we could well see some new wins added to this list in the near future.

What about other slots?

The only other big win to come close to achieving the record jackpot prize was a win of €17,861,800 which was landed in January 2013 at another casino on the Mega Fortune progressive jackpot slot by an unnamed Finnish player.

However, if we were to disregard the fluctuating fortunes of currencies on the exchanges and just take one single value, our non-Guinness World Record top five list of the biggest online slot wins would be as follows:

The top five biggest online slot wins in history

1. Mega Moolah - September 2018 - €18,910,668
2. Mega Moolah - October 2015 - €17,879,645
3. Mega Fortune - January 2013 - €17,861,800
4. Mega Moolah - January 2019 - €13,837,980
5. Mega Fortune - September 2011 - €11,736,375

The biggest slot win ever?

The online slot industry though still has some way to go to match the current world record for a slot pay out in a casino, which was a prize of over US$39 million won by a player at Excalibur Casino back in 2003. Instead of taking a smaller lump sum amount (as per the gambling rules in the United States regarding lump sum payments), he elected to take his prize in annual payments of $1.5 million, paid out over the next 25 years (until 2028).

However, it is worth noting that a significant proportion of that players win will be taken by the American taxman, the IRS, as big slots winnings are taxable in the US, whereas Mr Heywood's record breaking win is not subject to any taxation in the UK.

*all cash prize amounts have been rounded to the nearest whole pound, euro or dollar value.