With slots normally not sharing specific payback setting data on the machines themselves, some players wonder if there are any restrictions at all.
What percentage payouts do slots have to pay out?
Dianne R.
There’s no universal answer. Some markets have minimum payback requirements for electronic machines like slots, while others don’t. Nevada’s is set within regulations at an anemic 75%, while New Jersey is 83% and Maryland is 87%. (This is a long term target, and not a guarantee of any single session, it should be noted.)
The video lottery terminals overseen by the New York Lottery in New York have a floor of 90% for all machines, a pretty generous setup given 1 cent denomination machines in nearby Atlantic City overall pay less than that.
That’s a pretty broad range, but most slots that are designed today tend to come with a general range of 85-98%, with some half dozen or so choices, usually 1-2 percent apart, that casinos can select from (as long as their selection also meets the state’s minimums).
So even when a state doesn’t have a minimum, most modern slots won’t go outside of that range. While some players suspect casinos will just chase to the bottom for the lowest payouts possible, a lot of modern data tends to indicate that’s not the best approach.
With an increased emphasis on things like leased or licensed slots where there’s a fee to keep the games on the floor, maximizing the performance is important, and a default lowest setting strategy doesn’t necessarily deliver the best return for casinos.
So while a slot could theoretically pay 75% on a casino floor in a location like Nevada where it is allowed, the publicly reported data tends to show an overall machine payback of 90-92% in most markets, with lower denomination machines being below that and higher denomination machines being above it.
With more electronic games (which is what is reported on in these numbers), such as electronic table games being on casino floors today, there’s sometimes concerns about slot payouts being pushed even lower with the data being hidden by electronic table games or video poker pulling up the overall average.
But slots tend to be the largest chunk of the casino floor and do a lot more business for the casinos, and there’s also been a trend to prune video poker machines off floors because slots are more profitable. Some casinos have also watered down video poker paytables, reducing the delta between them and slots as well.
So while not perfect, the data we can view pretty much gives us the above to work with, which is better than nothing, and hopefully puts some players’ minds at ease.
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