Online Casino Payouts

return to player definition image

If you are an avid online casino player, or it’s your first time to play at an online, you’ve probably come across the term ‘RTP’. Well, it’s one of the most important terms in the gambling lingo yet not so many people quite understand what it means.

So what is the casino’s or a game’s average RTP? Is it a number? Is it a feature? And why is it so important that you fully understand it? This guide is here to help you!

What Is a Casino’s RTP?

In simple terms, the word RTP stands for Return to Player percentage, and it’s a representation of how much you are going to receive back…well, sort of. Other words that can be used in place of the RTP include payouts, though this one is broad and could have different meanings.

The RTP is the percentage of your total wins over the total amount of money that you have staked. It’s a theoretical value and is normally calculated over an extended period of time, and it’s not a true representation of what you should exactly expect every time you play a game. This is the reason why we used the word sort of in the first place.

For example, if you are playing a video slot game with an RTP of 94%, then you shouldn’t really expect your payout casinos to be an average of £0.94 for every £1 that you wager.

This can be explained this way. Sometimes while betting, you £0.94 could end up going into someone else’s win, or somebody could have wagered the same amount, which has contributed to the £100 that you’ve won. Therefore, the payout percentage of a game isn’t evenly distributed and it was, that could be similar to paying £0.06 to play instead of gambling.

If the payout percentage of a game is fixed on each spin, who would bother to play as they already know that they’ll be losing to the casino?

What makes gambling and betting exciting and thrilling is the uncertainty; the thought of you knowing that you’ll be staking £1 and that you could end up taking 10 other players’ £0.94 and walking away with £9.4. The payout percentage is the measure of the games that have been played by other players and pooled together.

Therefore, if you happen to be lucky enough to walk away with a £100 payout from a £5 session, you might as well calculate your RTP as 500%, yet it could also imply that some of the other players playing the same game might have a much lower RTP that what was advertised.

So why exactly should you pay keen attention to a game’s payout?

This percentage should be very useful to you as it helps you see the worth of the game that you are playing. We agree that while this figure will not help you predict what you should expect on the short term, they actually predict the long-term results of the game you choose and eventually show how generous a casino or a game is.

Example of how RTP works

Payout Reports

Online casinos and other bodies in the industry are expected to present players with all the payout reports. This is in line with making sure everything about gambling and betting is as transparent as possible. Therefore, as you’ll be searching for different services online, you should always base your RTP on the following figures:

  • Overall casinos payouts – This should be around 93% though we’ve even witnessed some of the highest payout online casinos offering figures up to 96% on average.
  • Software providers payouts – This varies from one company to another as different companies develop different games. For slots, a company that offers 94% and above is okay, while companies that develop table games should have an average of 96% and above.

How Will You Tell a Casino’s RTP?

As already mentioned, reputable and trusted paying online casino sites regularly hire 3rd party bodies to audit the RTP for their games. Therefore before choosing to play at an online casino or try out a company’s product, it’s advisable you do some digging with licensing companies such as Curacao, the Malta Gaming Authority or UK Gambling Commission, which have all these information on their websites.