Major Moolah, the Rival progressive that paid $20,000 at Malibu Club in 2016

This article was first published in February 2016, when Malibu Club, a casino with Rival Gaming software (not Microgaming, unlike most houses here) that no longer operates under that name, announced that its Major Moolah progressive slot had "lived up to its name" by paying $20,000 to "one very lucky player". We keep it as a record of how a small jackpot was sold, and of what a progressive slot is, which the release explained better than it knew.

What the casino announced

The release gave the sum and nothing else: no date, no initials for the winner, no stake and no number of spins, where the releases of the Microgaming casinos of those years (kept in the news archive) at least gave initials. The only addition was an invitation to "come and check out" the other 140 slots and games of the house, which is the one part we leave out. A payout without a story is only a figure.

What a progressive slot is, in the casino's words and in ours

A standard slot, the release said, "has a set amount to be won", while a progressive is linked to a network of games (the same title in many casinos), and every time a member plays, "a small percentage of the money is added to the jackpot", which the text saw "increasing the sum to the millions". The definition was right and the millions were not, since Major Moolah paid twenty thousand, and the figure that mattered was left out.

That figure is the contribution, the share of every bet that feeds the pool, and it comes out of the return of the game, so that the players of a progressive pay for the jackpot with every spin, whoever wins it, a point no release of those years made.

If the contribution were one per cent (a figure we assume for the example, since the release never gave it), a jackpot of $20,000 needed two million dollars of bets across the network before it could be paid. Two million placed by everyone, for a prize that went to one!

The four Rival progressives of the house

Malibu Club listed four "Rival Powered" progressives, and the release described them as a brochure would: Money Magic was built around a magician who pulled his hoop over a levitating woman, "proving there's no strings attached and no tricks to this game"; his saw and box were worth 400 to 800 coins, the floating girl 75. Strike Gold was a "retro type" slot with a pot of gold, gold bars and gold coins among its icons.

One Million Reels BC had a jackpot "as big as those dinosaurs", won by three T-rex icons, while Major Moolah, the one that had paid, was the plainest of the four: three reels, one line and the classic icons (sevens, bars, stars and the badges of the Major himself, as you can see in the pictures). The simplest game carried the prize, as often happens with progressives, where the jackpot and not the features is the reason for playing.

How it was played, as the release told it

A member could download the casino's software or play "instant" in the browser (no download, the release explained, "as it's accessed right in the browser"). In the lobby the player chose "Progressives" under the "Game Type" menu on the left, pressed "Launch", chose the coin and the bet size and spun; the instructions were those of 2016, when a casino still had to teach you its lobby.

The rest of the page was a card of facts in the style of the time: the $20,000 payout, four progressive slots and two platforms (download and instant play). A bonus was to be claimed by registering, logging in and clicking "claim a promotion" (the words of the lobby). A customer care by e-mail, toll-free number and live chat completed it, and none of it was checked by us then or now, since this page is a record and not a review.

Seen from 2026

Malibu Club is not among the operators we work with today, and the review that this site kept until this year (since removed) recorded its closure in February 2024; the $20,000, the 140 games and the bonus of 2016 belong to that year alone. Rival Gaming, instead, still exists, and the four names belong to its catalogue, not to the casino, so a player may still meet them elsewhere (unchecked by us).

The images on this page link to SlotoCash, a casino of the Deckmedia group which is still among those we present (an affiliate link, as the box above says), with a licence from Curaçao, that is an offshore licence, and games of another software (RealTime Gaming), so that you will not find Major Moolah there. What it offers today is in our SlotoCash review, written after trying it in demo mode, and its own terms prevail over anything printed here.

A player who wants to compare the offers of today finds them on our world list of no deposit bonuses, and the games we have played in demo are gathered in the slot hub, where a progressive is described for what it is (a game that returns less than its plain brother, since the jackpot must be paid by someone).

The other announcements of those years, among them the Mega Moolah above three million of 2015, are kept in the archive, where you can read how the jackpots of Microgaming were sold in the same months, with the same adjectives and the same silence about the contribution.

By the Online-Casinos.ws editorial team · Online since 2002 · Last updated: 9 October 2026