RTP remains one of the most important metrics for sweepstakes players to understand, but SweepsKings often finds that these useful percentages are rarely displayed in an easy-to-find way.
Metawin.us and its impressive game cards showing RTP percentages up front in the lobby
There’s also talk online of a gradual reduction in RTP at all online casinos – so what does all this mean for players?
Why RTP Matters and Why It Can Be Hard to Find
RTP stands for ‘Return To Player’ and it’s a percentage value (e.g., 96%) that represents how much of players’ wagers are returned to them on average over time, usually calculated by the developer over millions of rounds.
Technically, it should be available for any randomly-generated game of chance, including online slots, table games, fish shooters, instant win games, scratch cards etc.
This is the inverse of the house edge, which is the percentage that the casino generally takes over time.
Casual players may overlook the RTP, but it’s something that savvy players should keep at the forefront of their minds when playing – it represents how much money you’re likely to lose in the long term.
It generally sits somewhere in the 90s. If you’re playing a slot that offers 96%, for example, this means that for every 1 dollar you risk, you’re likely to receive 96 cents back over time (thousands of spins), losing 4 cents in the process.
It’s also vital to know that many suppliers offer multiple RTP configurations for the same title, allowing casinos to curate their RTP levels, meaning that some are objectively more generous – or stingy – than others.
In terms of how easy these figures are to find, there are sweeps platforms like Metawin.us that make things easy for players by showing the RTP on the game card in the lobby. This is a blessing, but, unfortunately, it’s also quite rare.
At the vast majority of sweepstakes casinos you’ll have to open up the game and dig through the info or rules tab to find the RTP rate, and even then, some titles still won’t show it. On the other hand, some providers go the extra mile and list the RTP for different game modes.
An example of the game info tab for Hot Ross by Hacksaw Gaming showing various RTP percentages for different modes
Once you start checking percentages manually, you’ll soon realize which providers offer this information and which don’t.
A Snapshot Comparison at Four Sweepstakes Casinos’ RTP
So while broad data on RTPs isn’t easily available, we carried out a small snapshot analysis to show how RTP can easily differ between sweepstakes platforms.
Sampling 10 randomly selected slots across four sites (WOW Vegas, Metawin.us, Hello Millions, TaoFortune) showed average RTPs ranging from mid-92% to mid-96%.
To be specific, the 10 random titles showed averages of:
- 95.78% at WOW Vegas
- 96.46% at Metawin.us
- 94.48% at Hello Millions
- 92.76% at TaoFortune
We also found one popular title (Elvis Frog Trueways by BGaming) available on all four sites, allowing a like-for-like comparison. The standard/highest RTP for this game is 96.7%, but variations were found at our four platforms:
- 96.7% at WOW Vegas
- 96.7% at Metawin.us
- 94.28% at Hello Millions
- 92.19% at TaoFortune
To put this into cold, hard figures, for 10,000 SC played that’s:
- 96.7% RTP: approximately 330 SC expected loss
- 94.28% RTP: approximately 572 SC expected loss
- 92.19% RTP: approximately 781 SC expected loss
As you can see, RTP can have a huge effect on your wins and losses on average.
Are High-RTP Slots Disappearing?
High-RTP slots do still exist on sweepstakes platforms, but players are often reporting difficulty finding them lately, and this lines up with our own experience too.
In fact, if you look into online discussions on real money online casinos – and even land-based casinos – you’ll likely find the same conversations taking place.
Slot RTPs have historically clustered around the mid-90% range, though percentages below that are, unfortunately, not uncommon today. It’s also worth mentioning that at TaoFortune we found one game at 90% too – shockingly low.
That’s why SweepsKings always tries to give a rough RTP average in our reviews, by looking at the lobby in question in detail. But the bottom line is that players should get into the habit of actively searching for high-RTP games themselves, rather than assuming each title has a good percentage.
Ultra high-RTP slots like 2021’s Book of 99 with 99% RTP are becoming harder to find
As mentioned above, this usually requires going into the menu for each game and often scrolling down to the bottom of the rules or info tab, while bearing in mind that many suppliers choose not to even list the RTP here – in those cases, you’ll simply be trusting that the provider has a reasonable RTP in place.
Alternatively, you could play at casinos like Metawin.us that pride themselves on being upfront about the RTP of every game, featuring the percentage prominently on each game card. This means you can easily browse the library and make choices without needing to load up the game.
Displaying RTP in this way represents a higher level of transparency that many players value, and we’d love to see the practice more widely adopted going forward for a better and more reliable gaming experience.
Author: Bogdan Lunkan
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