Las Vegas’ airport slots offer travelers last crack at a jackpot
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LAS VEGAS — Late Tuesday, a woman with a large roller bag took a seat at a Wheel of Fortune slot machine at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. She hand-fed three dollars into the slot and pressed the button. The day before, an anonymous traveler had won the $782,467.12 jackpot at the same one-arm bandit. A visitor had also pocketed more than a million dollars at a Wild Wild Buffalo machine a few rows away, one of three big winners at the airport in January.
The handful of gamblers playing close to midnight included several passengers who had recently disembarked from Delta flights. They arrived from different destinations but shared the same hope: That Lady Luck would pay another visit to the D gates in Terminal 3.
But she was not coming, at least to the Wheel of Fortune machine teasing passersby with a promise of six figures. The losing woman stood up, defeated.
“The luck is all yours,” she said to the traveler waiting for a turn.
Most people don’t travel to Vegas to gamble at the airport, but Harry Reid’s slots tempt visitors to make last-ditch bets before boarding, like moths to a neon flame. The odds aren’t great, but the story if you win is.
“It’s this Hail Mary thing as people are leaving town,” said Scott Roeben, journalist and founder of the local news blog Vital Vegas. “They’re usually winning with their last hundred dollars or whatever it is after they’ve been beaten up in the casinos. … It’s that last grasp of hope.”
Harry Reid is one of two airports in the country that has slot machines (the other is Nevada’s Reno-Tahoe International; Chicago couldbecome a third). The exact number of slots fluctuates, but Heidi Hayes, the airport’s program administrator, says there are more than a thousand scattered throughout the Vegas airport pre- and post-security. They’re as ubiquitous as they are in the city’s gas stations and grocery stores, glowing and whirling a few steps from your gate, tucked away in smoke-friendly gaming lounges, near TSA checkpoints.Just another part of the landscape.
Hayes didn’t have stats on how many travelers play but said airport gaming is “very popular” among the nearly 60 million travelers that pass through annually. According to a 2022 news release from Michael Gaughan’s Airport Slot Concession, the company that has operated the airport’s slots since the mid-1980s, the machines have generated more than a billion dollars in revenue for the airport to date. Gaming revenue from casinos totaled $15.5 billion for the state in 2023.
Per Nevada law, you must be at least 21 years old to play. Per the law of averages, you probably won’t win.
In recent years, most of the gross annual revenue (approximately $34.4 million of $39.8 million) goes to the airport, allegedly helping keep airport operating costs down.
“As a whole, people will lose playing slot machines,” said David G. Schwartz, gaming historian and affiliate professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. “But especially when you have big progressive jackpots, an individual can win money on any given session.”
The slots at the airports do have the allure of those progressive jackpots, meaning the machines are part of a larger network of slots; the longer people play them without winning, the bigger the pot grows. Should you be blessed by the random number generator gods and hit a jackpot, you don’t just win whatever money is inside the machine you’re feeding, but a pool from lots of machines.
In June, a traveler won $1.3 million playing Wheel of Fortune “Triple Double Emeralds” in the Terminal 1 Esplanade. About a month later, someone hit a $1,286,324 jackpot playing Wheel of Fortune in Terminal 3. In September, a woman from Texas hit a $643,435 jackpot at a Wheel of Fortune-branded game in Terminal 1 near Gate A. And a month after that, a traveler turned a $2.50 bet into $347,993.85 at a Wheel of Fortune “Double Gold Gold Spin Slots.”
Hayes says the largest jackpot ever won was $3.9 million in 2005; it was, you guessed it, on a Wheel of Fortune machine.
Schwartz says it’s just as likely for a traveler to win big — or, more often than not, just lose — at the airport than on the Strip, as the slots are subject to the same regulations. And plenty of people do take home money. Like Ivana Ng, who still remembers a momentous $10 payout from a dollar bet she made in 2015. Or Candace Wright from New Orleans, who walked away with a $3.85 profit in 2021 — almost enough to buy a bottle of water at a Hudson News.
Anecdotally, however, the airport slots have the worst odds in town for players, Roeben said.
“Slots on the Strip are considered pretty tight,” Roeben said, which is gaming lingo for not as likely to pay out compared to “loose” ones off the Strip or in the suburbs.“But, the airport is like next level.”
There’s no data to back up the sentiment, just lore.
“There’s a law here that regulates gaming that says you can’t hold more than 25 percent of money you take in in a slot,” Roeben said. “It’s suspected that the airport is about the tightest that you can legally have.”
Big Vegas jackpots on slotshappen oftenat Strip casinos, but Roeben says it’s a bigger deal when they hit at the airport because of that reputation.
A passenger passing through Harry Reid on Tuesday night asked a slots attendant for tips. Her station — which was part bank, part hostess stand — sat next to Monday’s winning Wheel of Fortune machine. Though she was not working the day of the windfall, she said the winner probably played the 7- or 10-credit button, which doubles your money. The traveler asked her if the machine was especially lucky.
“If it is, it is, you know what I mean?” she said while the machine ate another bet.
Roeben says Wheel of Fortune, Megabucks and Wild Wild Buffalo are three slot brands “where you see the really big wins” because they’re networked throughout Vegas and Nevada, and sometimes multiple states. He said he tends to stay away from such machines and recommends friends do the same because even though the prize is bigger, your odds of winning the fortune are smaller.
“I’d rather win $500 than have a shot at a million,” said Roeben, who gambles a few days a week.
Still, Roeben says he’ll occasionally play airport slots despite his better judgment, for the fun of it when he picks friends up from inbound flights. As far as his memory serves, he’s never won a penny in the process.
“Gamblers are eternally optimistic,” Roeben said. “We don’t really necessarily care if the odds are against us more or less.”
And besides, “luck is always going to win over math,” he added.
