Jackpots

How a jackpot is funded

A jackpot pool grows from a slice of each qualifying stake. The slice is taken from the player's cash balance as an extra debit on top of the stake; it is not carved out of the game's return-to-player, because the game provider, not the platform, owns the game's RTP. The extra debit is shown, not hidden, and makes jackpot contribution an accounting decision rather than a marketing one. Only cash-funded stakes take part: a stake that drew any bonus money neither contributes nor can win, since a bonus-funded hit would pay withdrawable cash and bypass wagering.

Each jackpot has tiers (Mini, Minor, Major, Grand, in the usual arrangement), and each tier carries:

A jackpot also carries a minimum stake to qualify and a reserve share — the portion of each contribution that goes to a reserve pool rather than the visible one. The reserve is what refills the seed after a win, so a hit does not leave the operator funding the next seed out of pocket.

Where the money actually sits

Jackpot money is not a number in a settings table. Each pool is a real ledger account, and contributions are real movements from the player's stake into it. The visible jackpot figure on the lobby is the balance of that account.

That means a jackpot liability appears in your books as a liability. It also means a jackpot cannot be accidentally paid out twice or paid from nothing — the same double-entry rules that protect stakes and wins protect the pool.

A win moves from the pool account to the player's wallet, and the tier resets toward its seed from its own reserve, capped at what the reserve holds (so after an early hit the tier restarts below its seed and climbs back).

Contribution, draw and payout happen inside the same transaction that settles the casino round, in a fixed order: stake, contribution per tier, a draw from the highest tier down (the first hit wins, so a spin never pays two tiers), payout, reseed. The draw comes after the round's own contribution, so a player can win the tier they just fed. A player can only be paid a tier's pool once: the pool accounts are locked before the balance is read. The jackpot is paid as its own ledger entry, separate from the provider's win, so the provider's figures stay the provider's. If the player's cash cannot cover the contribution, nothing posts, the spin neither contributes nor draws, and the round still settles.

When a jackpot is live

A round takes part only when all of these hold: the global Jackpots live switch is on; the stake is above zero and at least the jackpot's minimum stake; a jackpot is switched on in the session's currency and has tiers; the player is active and not self-excluded or on a break; and the game passes the eligibility rules. A crypto session feeds only a jackpot held in that same coin. Jackpots ship switched off until staff turn the global switch on.

Jackpot wins that a game provider decides itself (for example Pragmatic's own jackpots) are a separate path: the provider quotes the win and the platform credits it as an ordinary provider win, not from these pools.

Safety rules built in

• A tier with eligible games and a non-positive hit rate is rejected at creation or edit. Such a tier can never pay, so it would silently swallow player contributions and grow unbounded. The platform refuses to create it.
• A tier that holds money or has paid stays. A tier can only be deleted while its jackpot is off, both pools are empty and it has never paid a win, so the ledger accounts and the win records are never orphaned.
• The seed is the only operator-funded movement. Creating a tier moves its seed from house operating funds into the pool, once; a repeat for the same rank is refused, so a retry cannot seed twice. Every other movement is player-funded.

What the player sees

The player site shows the jackpot for each currency the player holds, and the lobby headlines the highest jackpot on the platform, compared across currencies in USD. The figure quoted is the top tier's pool, rounded down — never the reserve, which a hit cannot pay out.

The jackpot terms page (/terms/jackpot, linked from the lobby jackpot card) states each enabled jackpot's figures straight from its configuration: tiers with their seed and current pool, the minimum stake, the total contribution rate and the eligible and excluded games. Hit rates are never published. The rules text under them is static and still placeholder copy awaiting legal review.

A win refreshes the player's balance through the normal balance update; there is no separate "you won" pop-up yet.

The figures are cached for 10 seconds, because the lobby headline is public and read on every page view. It is not refreshed on a win: the pool resets inside the win's own settlement, so the headline can show the pre-win amount for up to 10 seconds. That is a display delay only — a payout always reads the pool itself, under lock.

Scope & Roadmap

Implemented. Multi-tier jackpots with per-tier contribution rates, seeds and hit rates; per-tier game eligibility; minimum-stake qualification; a reserve pool that refills the seed after a win; pools held as real ledger accounts so contributions and payouts are auditable double-entry movements; contribution and payout inside live casino settlement; a global kill switch; the never-pays tier guard; player-facing jackpot display, cached for 10 seconds.

Backoffice page (Casino > Jackpots). Every jackpot is listed with its tiers (rank, current pool balance from the tier's main account, seed, contribution rate and hit rate). An operator can:

• Turn jackpots live or off everywhere. The Jackpots live switch at the top of the page is the operator-wide kill switch. While it is off, no round contributes or wins, whatever each jackpot's own setting. Both directions need a reason and are audited.
• Create a jackpot: name, currency, minimum stake, reserve share (from 0 up to, not including, 1) and whether it starts on. A name is unique per currency.

• Add, edit and delete tiers. Adding a tier takes a name, a rank (unique within the jackpot, and fixed afterwards), contribution rate and hit rate (fractions: 0.01 is 1%), a seed amount and a reason; the seed is moved in from house funds. Editing changes the name, rates and seed; a new seed amount takes effect at the next reseed and moves no money now. Deleting is refused unless the jackpot is off, the pools are empty and the tier has never paid. Amounts finer than the currency allows are refused, never rounded.

• Turn a jackpot on or off. Turning one off never moves money: the pools keep their balance, nothing is contributed and nothing can be won while it is off, and the lobby jackpot card is hidden. Turning it on again resumes on the same balances. Settlement reads the switch inside its own transaction, so a change applies from the next settled round. Only one jackpot per currency can be on; enabling a second is refused.

• Set the minimum stake, in the jackpot's currency. A settled stake below it neither contributes nor can win. The amount is a positive decimal with up to 18 decimal places and is stored exactly as typed.
• Choose the eligible games. A choice at the top of the rules has three options. All games: every game feeds the jackpot. Selected categories: only games in the ticked categories. Custom rules: include or exclude a game studio, a category or one game, picked by name (or all games). Rules target the game's studio, not the integration that serves it; a game with no studio is never matched by a studio rule. A rule for one game beats the broader rules, and among those an exclude beats an include. The choice opens on what the saved rules amount to. The rule set is saved as a whole in one transaction. The page warns when no include rule is left, because then no game is eligible.

Every change on this page is written to the audit log.

Not built. Editing a jackpot's reserve share or currency after creation, and deleting a whole jackpot, are not on the page. Jackpots are single-operator, and a settled round that the provider later rolls back leaves its jackpot movements in the pool (there is no reversal yet). There is no certified random-number draw for the hit: the chance per round is the tier's hit rate, and certification of that draw remains a requirement before real-money use (see What You Still Need).

Also absent: wide-area progressives shared across operators, mystery jackpots, and time-based jackpot races.