How Slots Became The Most Popular Online Casino Game

Let’s throw a statistic at you: online slots represent over 60% of the global online casino market. When you consider all the different games available via digital casinos, that stat is mind-blowing. It shows the sheer popularity of online slots – not just in one country, but all over the planet. 

The funny thing is, online casinos have many other games that should provide a higher chance of winning money. Table games like Roulette still revolve around luck and chance yet you can narrow down your options to Red or Black. Then, you have Poker and Blackjack, both of which are widely provided at live casinos and include elements of skill rather than being purely lucky. 

Slots aren’t the quickest and easiest way to win money from online casinos, so how have they become the most popular game? We think it’s largely down to these key features: 

Free Spins Bonuses

Welcome bonuses and ongoing promotions are two of the reasons online casinos have thrived in recent times. They give you (the player) extra things to use across these websites – sometimes without needing to deposit money at all. 

Why has this caused slots to become so popular? Well, the majority of bonuses and offers are for “free spins” on different slot games. Casinos see this as the easiest way to draw new players in; you get some free spins to try and win money on a popular slot game and they earn your patronage. 

There’s been a particular surge in no deposit free spins not on GamStop for UK players in recent times, further boosting the popularity of slots. Most international sites are resorting to bonuses like this instead of the classic welcome packages. Forcing players to use their bonuses on slots means more people try these games and fall in love with them. They’re more inclined to play them again, so the overall player count goes up. 

What’s more, the sites offering regular matched deposit bonuses often have T&Cs restricting the wagering benefits of your bonus. While you can use your bonus funds across every game, slots normally carry the most weight towards wagering the funds. In other words, people are encouraged to play slots even with “normal” bonuses, so the cycle of popularity increases! 

Huge Game Variety

Anyone involved in gaming will know that competition is the key to creating popularity within a genre. It’s why Battle Royale games became so well-played a few years ago – you had the likes of Fortnite, DayZ, H1Z1, Warzone, PUBG and Apex Legends all battling it out with one another. It gave games more variety to deal with, so they could try lots of similar games and settle on the best ones. 

We’ve seen a similar thing happen in the online slot industry. Gone are the days of simple 3-reel slots, replaced by massive games with tonnes of features and new ways to play. Each casino holds thousands of slots compared to dozens or hundreds of table games. Variety is what keeps people interested as they can play loads of different slot varieties, such as: 

  • Traditional video slots
  • Modern video slots
  • Megaways slots
  • Hold & Win slots

Different developers incorporate their twists on things to further broaden the variety. It’s part of the reason Roulette and Blackjack have fallen in popularity across online sites. There are only a couple of ways to enjoy games like these, so you don’t have a huge collection of titles to pick from. It makes them very boring, very quickly. Slots stay entertaining and “fresh” because there’s so much competition to stand out. 

Massive Jackpot Wins

We spoke about online slots not being one of the quickest or easiest ways of winning money at online casinos. That’s down to their randomness – though we believe their popularity is more closely linked to the jackpot potential of these games. 

When you play table games or any other type of online casino game, there’s usually a limit to what you’ll win based on your stake. That’s not strictly true with online slots. They can come with progressive jackpots that keep getting bigger and bigger until someone wins – and the winnings are absolutely absurd. 

For context, the Guinness World Record for the largest jackpot payout in an online slot machine game is £13,209,300. This was achieved in 2015 via the popular Mega Hoolah game by Microgaming. A jackpot this size is rare, but for even more context you’ll find ones starting at £100,000+ at most online casinos these days. 

You’re never winning anywhere close to this amount of money through any other online casino game. The closest you’ll maybe get is through a live game show – but most of these are just live versions of online slots anyway! The jackpot potential makes slots more rewarding, especially when you consider the low stakes needed to achieve a possible payout. 

Bonus Rounds & Features

As well as getting bonuses encouraging players to use online slots, the games themselves come with different bonus rounds and features. Once more, this is something mainly unique to online slots when compared with other casino games. 

You have the slot game itself – spinning the reels and matching symbols – but matching certain symbols triggers different features. Loads of the best games have bonus rounds where you’re almost taken out of the main game and can play a mini-game to try and win more money. Or, you get free spins to use in the slot – some even include bonus multipliers where your winnings drastically multiply! 

Features like these keep slots fun and always install an element of “what if?”. What if I’m the lucky one who triggers a bonus round and then gets an insane multiplier? Other games are unable to incorporate this level of excitement and randomness, which is why slots succeed. 

The stats speak for themselves and holding a 60% share of the online casino market proves slots are the most popular game out there. We think it’s down to the variety on display, all the great free spins bonuses you can claim, the fun features and the potential to win massive jackpots.

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