Biggest UK Online Casino Wins

The worldwide gambling industry is huge, and growing all the time. In the year ending March 2023, gambling firms in Great Britain achieved a record-breaking annual revenue of £15.1 billion.

Of this, £3.2 billion came from losses on online slots games.

These profits are achieved because casinos give themselves an edge over their customers by using online slots and games that take in more money from losing wagers than they pay out in winnings.

All slots and table games have a Return To Player (RTP), which is the percentage of all money wagered on them that's paid out in winnings, on average, over millions of spins.

Online slots typically have an RTP of around 95%, although this varies a fair amount.

For every £100 wagered on a 95% RTP slot, you'll get back £95 on average. This average £5 loss per £100 wagered goes to the casino.

With the advantage clearly with the casinos, to the tune of billions of pounds every year, are there any ways to come out on top and profit from online slots?

The good news is that there are a couple of ways. Of these, by far the most reliable is to take the edge back over the casino by only doing casino offers that have long-term value, which are known as positive expected value (+EV) offers.

You can learn how to make profits into the thousands of pounds from these casino offers here.

The other way to end up in profit from playing slots is very simple - get lucky and win a jackpot! Of course, the chances of landing a jackpot are extremely small, and it's very important to gamble responsibly and well within your means or, better still, stick to only doing +EV casino offers. 

In this article we'll take a look at some of the biggest online casino wins in the UK, and how progressive jackpot slots work.

So let's hang up the lucky horseshoe, grab our four-leaf clover, cross our fingers, generally abuse every good luck cliche going, and see how a handful of very lucky gamblers managed to skyrocket their wealth into the millions with a single spin of an online slot.

Now, where did I put my lucky pants?

What Is a Progessive Jackpot Slot?

Before moving on to the lucky winners, it's worth looking at the type of online slot they all used to win their 7-figure plus payouts - progressive jackpot slots.

All online slots have a maximum payout, which is either a jackpot or a payline with the highest multiplier. For slots that aren't progressive jackpot slots, this is normally a fixed amount, worked out by multiplying your stake by the maximum multiplier of the slot (for example a 3000x multiplier would pay out 3000 times your stake, giving £6,000 from a £2 spin).

Bloodsuckers, which is a low variance slot, has a maximum multiplier of a relatively modest 1014.6 times your stake (a 1014.6x multiplier). This would return £2029.20 from a £2 spin.

At the other end of the spectrum is the extremely high variance Tombstone RIP slot, with an incredible maximum multiplier of 300,000x.

Although you're incredibly unlikely to hit this multiplier, if you did you'd be treated to a £300,000 payout from just a £1 stake. Here's a screenshot from a maximum win on a €1.10 total stake on the slot:

Progressive jackpot slots work a little differently to regular slots, by taking a portion of your stake and adding this to a jackpot fund. The screenshot below shows Mega Moolah, which is an example of a progressive jackpot slot.

Not taking into account the jackpots, Mega Moolah has a very low RTP of 88.12%. On top of this, there's an additional jackpot contribution of 5.30% of your stake, meaning that for every £100 staked, £5.30 is added to the jackpot fund.

This fund is shared between the four jackpots - Mini (red), Minor (orange), Major (yellow), and Mega (white). In the screenshot, the value of the Mega Jackpot at the top left is £3,620,256.83 at the time. Funded by the 5.3% jackpot contributions, this jackpot builds up until a lucky player eventually wins it.

Online progressive jackpot payouts can be triggered in several ways:

• At random, using the slot's Random Number Generator (RNG).
• By hitting a particular payline, for example, a line of special symbols.
• By activating a bonus feature. From within this, you might need a certain outcome on a prize wheel or pick three matching jackpot symbols from a set of hidden symbols.

Mega Moolah has a randomly triggered bonus round that can happen after any spin, independent of the payline you've landed on. If you hit the bonus round, you're presented with the following screen:

The bonus round features a prize wheel with red, orange, yellow, and white zones for the four different possible jackpots. To win the Mega Jackpot, the wheel needs to stop with the pointer over the white zone with the image of the paw, as shown below:

Here's a screenshot of Mega Moolah's demo or free play mode, showing what would happen if you won the Mega jackpot:

Online progressive jackpot slots tend to be networked slots - a range of slots across multiple casinos, played by thousands of players all contributing to a single jackpot fund. This is how the enormous jackpots are achieved.

The screenshot below shows different Mega Moohah slots at a particular casino, all of which share the same jackpot fund:

When a player of any of these slots across all of the casinos that host them wins one of the jackpots, the jackpot amount drops to a minimum amount. The Mega Moolah Mega jackpot resets to £1,000,000 after being won, for example.

This minimum amount is known as the seed amount, and it's guaranteed and provided by the casino or slot provider. After being re-seeded at this minimum amount, the jackpot starts to grow again, funded by players' jackpot contributions as before.

Another popular provider of networked progressive jackpots is Jackpot King. With these slots, the jackpot is triggered by hitting a specific winning payline - a line of Jackpot King symbols.

This can be triggered randomly on any spin and at any stake size. You can see what this looks like on the Luck O' The Irish Fortune Play slot below:

After entering the bonus round, the player then needs to activate the Wheel King to have a chance of winning the jackpot.

To hit the biggest jackpot, known as Jackpot King, the Wheel King needs to land on the 'Jackpot King' symbol. You can see what this looks like in the screenshot below, which shows a reconstruction of an actual £4.6 million UK jackpot win:

If you're lucky enough to ultimately hit the Jackpot King, you'll be greeted by a screen informing you that you've just become several million pounds richer than you were a few seconds ago.

It's worth pointing out that, even if you've made it through to one of these jackpot bonus rounds, you're still very unlikely to come away with a huge profit.

To temper your expectations a little, here's a screenshot of one of my own Jackpot King bonus rounds, which I hit whilst wagering for an Outplayed casino offer. Although I suppose winning £1 from a 10p spin isn't terrible, it did mean I needed to abandon all thoughts of buying that bright yellow Lamborghini that had come to mind when I entered the Jackpot King bonus round!

How The List of Winners Was Chosen

When selecting the big winners for this list, care was taken to make sure that there was a reliable source for the win.

There's a lot of conflicting information about big casino winners on the internet, with some overseas players being incorrectly listed as UK players, and some wins that are mentioned in a couple of places but aren't easily verified. As such, this won't necessarily be a definitive list of the biggest UK winners to date. 

All of the wins came from hitting a jackpot on a progressive jackpot slot, as these are by far the biggest payouts available from slots, at least without using ridiculously high stakes on regular slots. 

Speaking of ridiculously high stakes, it was decided to exclude any wins from online casino streamers showing their wins on video-sharing sites for a couple of reasons.

First, it's well-known that many of these streamers (probably most of them) are playing with money given to them by the casino. This allows the streamers to wager vast amounts on slots, often for many hours a day, whilst not risking their own money. It also means that when they inevitably hit some huge wins, these winnings aren't theirs to keep, although they will often take a cut of the winnings.

These 'fake balance' online streamers are basically just an advert for the casinos, luring impressionable people into gambling with them. 

The second reason is that even if the streamers are using their own money, they will often be using unrealistic and irresponsible stake sizes (some overseas streamers use $600 or even $10,000 stakes for each spin in some cases!) This obviously isn't something to be encouraged, and using such high stakes wouldn't be sustainable even for millionaires, if they were using their own money. 

Before the maximum stake limits of £5 for those aged 25+ and £2 for gamblers aged 18-24 were introduced in September 2024, UK streamers could also have used these very high stakes.

Even streamers using £5 spins will be wagering millions of pounds on slots and gambling for hours a day to achieve the big wins that are such good adverts for the casinos. However, doing £5 spins for hours on end will result in enormous long-term losses, due to the casino's edge, and it can also lead to serious gambling problems. 

Online streamers make their money from affiliate schemes with the casino (basically, a share of the losses of people who sign up to casinos through their affiliate link), advertising revenue, Patreon payments from their followers, and a cut of their winnings from their live-streamed gambling. Without these sources of income, they wouldn't be able to maintain their gambling and would have losses of millions of pounds. 

For these reasons, all of the big wins listed here came from recreational gamblers who just happened to get lucky, rather than professional streamers. 

The Biggest UK Online Casino Winners

8. Michael Clark - £5,400,000 - January 2023

Michael Clark, from Newcastle, had an incredible start to 2023 when he achieved the biggest-ever payout in Betfred's 57-year history, winning £5.4 million from a £1.40 spin on King Kong Cashpots Jackpot King.

He said that when he won the jackpot, he wasn't paying too much attention because he thought he'd won £5,000, but then checked his phone and realised there were "way too many numbers for £5,000" and that it looked "more like a mobile number".

Former mental health worker Michael, who decided to take a break from his work after his win, said he planned to spend some of his winnings on a more expensive engagement ring for his fiancee Sherelle, a no-expense-spared wedding at St. James' Park, a honeymoon in the Caribbean and season tickets for Newcastle United. He also said he was going to get a new stairlift installed for his grandmother.

"This proves nice guys can win. Michael is the most worthy of winners. It is brilliant news for this smashing couple," said Betfred founder and owner Fred Done, who opened his first betting shop in Ordsall, Salford, in 1967.

Michael Clark's Betfred interview 

Daily Mail article 

7. Anonymous - £5,400,000 - October 2013

A man from Aberdeenshire, who chose to remain anonymous, won an impressive £5,400,000 from a 20p wager on Hall of Gods at BetVictor. The father of one said that the first person he told was his wife who, understandably, was as surprised as him.

He said he would take some time out to decide what to do with his newfound wealth, but intended to donate some to charity, since he believed it was right to give something back to help others who don’t have the same luck in life.

At the time, it was BetVictor's biggest-ever payout, and it came just six months after another huge jackpot win of £4.5 million on the Mega Fortune slot.

Below, you can see a sequence of screenshots showing a simulation of a Mega Jackpot win on Hall of Gods by a lucky Estonian lady on Wednesday 8th January 2020.

Bonus Game Triggered From Main Game

Bonus Game Instruction Screen

Bonus Round Hidden Symbols

Three Mega Jackpot Symbols Revealed

Mega Jackpot Payout Screen

6. Anonymous - £5,543,986.99 - 24th May 2019

There's not much information about this 2019 winner, other than that they were playing with British pounds, so probably from the UK, and they were playing on the Mega Moolah.

The win posted on the Mega Moolah website.

5. John Orchard - £5,883,044 - 9th December 2012

John Orchard, a Jobcentre worker from Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, walked away with a payout of nearly £5.9 million when playing the Dark Knight slot and hitting the Mega Moolah Mega Jackpot. He'd only been a member of Butlers Bingo for a few days when he got lucky with a 30p spin. At the time, it was the biggest UK win, easily beating the previous record of £1.2 million, won by Soraya Lowell, from Scotland.

60-year-old John celebrated his winnings by taking his family to Center Parcs for the weekend, trading in his Renault Clio for a £40,000 Jaguar XF, and retired five years early from the Jobcentre. He planned to use some of his winnings to visit his great-granddaughter in Canada with his wife, and to be able to upgrade their 25th wedding anniversary celebrations the following year.

Here's a screenshot of the Dark Knight slot, which is no longer linked to the Mega Moolah jackpot network.

Daily Mail article about John Orchard's win

4. Anonymous - £6,200,000 - December 2016

Another anonymous player scooped an impressive £6.2 million from a £1.25 wager on Mega Fortune at BGO Casino in December 2016. He contacted customer support as he thought the game had malfunctioned, but they confirmed the good news that he'd actually won the Mega Jackpot.

3. Neil From Aberdeen - £6,373,373 - 17/11/17

In a supreme case of beginner's luck, Neil from Aberdeen was at home in the kitchen, using his laptop whilst his wife and kids watched TV. He happened to see an advert for Casumo, an online casino. Thinking the site "looked like fun", he signed up, deposited £30, and started playing some games.

He noticed that the jackpot on Hall of Gods looked quite inviting, and started doing £4 spins on the slot. On one of his spins, he triggered the bonus round and was lucky enough to hit the Mega Jackpot, for a windfall payout of over £6.3 million.

After he won, he wrote each digit of his winning amount on individual pieces of paper and laid them on the floor. He then called for his mum and dad and asked them to guess what it was. They said they thought it was a lottery number!

Neil's plans for his newfound wealth were to buy a season ticket for Liverpool, a holiday home in Tenerife for his parents, a trip to one of the Disney resorts with his kids, and a holiday to see his sister in Australia. He was also already a member of Macmillan Cancer Support and wanted to give some of his fortune to charity.

Casumo article about the win.

2. Jon Heywood - £13,213,838.68 - 6th October 2015

Afghanistan veteran soldier Jon Heywood, from Crewe, Cheshire was the first person on our list to hit an 8-figure jackpot. He became an instant multi-millionaire after winning an astonishing £13.2 million from a 25p spin at Betway. Jon was playing the Mega Moolah slot by Microgaming, which has a reputation around the world as the 'Millionaire Maker'.

In a story very similar to some of the other big winners in this list, Jon was anything but a seasoned gambler, having opened his Betway account only 25 minutes before hitting the jackpot!

He'd been watching a documentary about World War II tanks on the History Channel when he saw an advert for Betway, so signed up. Jon said he picked the Mega Moolah slot purely because it had the biggest icon.

He started spinning, although most of his attention was on what was on the TV, so he didn't see how the bonus round started, and the first thing he noticed was that there was a big wheel spinning.

The pointer ended up on the line between the Major and Mega wins, so Jon thought he'd won £10,000 to start with. However, the winnings displayed didn't stop there, but kept going up until they eventually settled at a massive £13,213,838.68.

When it came to what to spend some of his fortune on, Jon's first thought was to pay for a heart and lung transplant for his dad, who had stage 2 heart and lung failure.

Jon said "It's amazing. The first thing I will spend it on is the best possible medical treatment for my dad. That's more important than anything." To further help his parents to live as comfortably as possible under the circumstances, he also bought them a new house.

Jon also spoke of one of his oldest friends, Mike Wright, who he'd known since his school days. They had agreed on a pact whereby if either one of them won any money, they'd help the other one out. True to his word, after winning the £13.2 million, he gifted Mike £4 million, saying "at the end of the day, what am I going to do with an extra £4 million in the bank?"

He decided to leave his job to move into buying and renovating property, paying himself £4,000 a month and putting the rest in a bank, investing it or using it to buy more properties.

One focus was to create disabled lettings, motivated by another friend, Glyn Poole, whose son had been badly injured in a car crash and had found it difficult to find suitable accommodation. Jon continued to have a very hands-on approach, despite his newfound wealth, with Glyn commenting "I do still find it strange when I see him lying under a bath fitting taps!"

Alan Algar, Head of PR at Betway at the time, said about Jon, "When we'd finished the weekend with him, he'd probably met about ten people, and every single one of the came away from that and just as they went said 'This couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.'"

Betway blog post about Jon Heywood

Jon Heywood Betway interview

1. Mr M - £15,183,085.96 - 14th April 2021

The record for the highest jackpot win was pushed through the £15 million threshold by an extremely lucky slots player who goes by the name Mr M.

He was playing at 32Red when an 80p spin on spin on Book of Atem: WowPot! took him through to the bonus round and, ultimately, to the WowPot! jackpot, which had risen to an unbelievable £15,183,085.96.

When Mr M was asked how he felt after the win, he summarised his feelings: “I’m still in shock, I can’t believe it. Obviously, I am absolutely over the moon because stuff like this doesn’t happen to me! When I won, I had to Google how many zeros make up a million – just to be doubly sure! I just sat and looked at the screen for ages. It’s still sinking in. The last few months have been really stressful with work – but this is going to change my life and my family’s life. We’ve been saving for a house and to get married, so all that is taken care of now. My family have worked hard all their lives, so we are going to buy both our parents new houses. I’ve got my eye on a vintage car too! It’s a really humbling experience and it’s difficult to put into words how lucky I feel and thankful I am.”

The Biggest UK Jackpot Winners Listed

Here's a quick summary table of the biggest UK jackpot winners mentioned in this article, including the amount of money they won and the equivalent value as of the writing of this article, in November 2024.

The UK's Biggest Lottery Jackpot Winners

In case you feel that £15.1 million is just pocket change, the good news is you can find even bigger jackpots from lotteries, with EuroMillions giving the highest payouts of all. It's worth mentioning that these are even harder to win than progressive jackpots, although, of course, a big reason for choosing lotteries is to contribute to the huge value they add to a range of charities.

If you're interested in the Return To Player of the United Kingdom National Lottery, including the jackpot wins, has been worked out to be around 45%. If you remove the contribution of jackpots, which you're obviously very unlikely to hit, the RTP is around 29%.

• £195,707,000 - Tuesday 19th July 2022 - Anonymous
• £184,262,899 - Tuesday 10th May 2022 - Joe and Jess Thwaite, Gloucester
• £177,033,699 - Tuesday 26th November 2024 - Unknown
  
• £171,815,297 - Friday 23rd September 2022 - Unknown
• £170,221,000 - Tuesday 8th October 2019 - Anonymous
• £161,653,000 - Tuesday 12th July 2011 - Colin and Chris Weir, Largs, Scotland

Conclusion

Changing your life forever by hitting a huge jackpot, whether that's on a lottery or a progressive jackpot slot, is something I'm sure very few people would turn down. At the same time, it's fair to say that you're very unlikely to join the ranks of the big winners mentioned in this article.

The vast majority of people who gamble on slots, progressive jackpot or otherwise, will end up making losses in the long-term, due to the casino's built-in edge (because the RTP of slots and games is always less than 100%).

If you'd like to turn the tables on bookmakers and casinos and gain an edge whilst playing online slots and table games, there is a huge amount of value available by doing casino offers.

The graphic below illustrates how these work over time, with the edge gained by only doing positive expected value (+EV) offers leading to an overall upward trend with your profits.

To find out more about casino offers, Matched Betting, and value betting, be sure to check out Outplayed.com, which includes a wealth of guides, tools, and information to help you make fantastic long-term profits from the comfort of your home.