We can’t give you a hard number for the most-expensive machine ever but a 'box' can now run you between $17,000 to $22,000, according to figures supplied by UNLV.
The prize for "most expensive," in terms of the total cost of putting a new machine on the casino floor, would almost certainly go to whichever brand was the most expensive to license. The pioneering examples of this were vintage television shows like I Dream of Jeannie, Beverly Hillbillies (Max Baer has been quoted as saying that he could live another 2,000 years and never have to work another day, thanks to his multi-game licensing deal with IGT), or Wheel of Fortune, which back in 1996 became the first example of such a cross-media alliance and set the stage for every "themed" slot machine since. Next came the movie franchises, like Star Wars, which was at the time (and may still hold the record for being) the most expensive slot-licensing deal ever made (the figures involved were never disclosed and the deal has now ended, due to wider political issues involving the Disney brand and brick-and-mortar casinos -- see "Today's News" 11/19/13).
The agent representing the estate of Lucille Ball originally told IGT that there was no way that the star's survivors would ever go for a slot-machine deal -- until he floated numbers in the $10-million range. All of a sudden, the estate became extremely interested and several Lucy-theme machines would later make their way onto the casino floor, although the $10 million licensing figure wasn't ultimately reached, we understand. Even estates as notoriously protective of their brand as Frank Sinatra's have been found willing to play ball -- or, rather, reel -- if the figure is high enough.
Today, manufacturers can spend tens of millions of dollars per year licensing such brands and, whereas it used to be the slot-game agents in pursuit of license owners, today it's as much the other way around, with representatives of the brands and actors hoping to make a score for their client (especially if that client's getting past their prime when it comes to the "day job"). The latest figures we could get our hands on were from around a decade ago (and there's since been some cooling on the household-name brand-licensing front, owing to slot companies finding their fingers burned by some expensive deals that evidently didn't translate to popularity with the players, including Rocky, The Hulk, "Laverne and Shirley," "The Honeymooners," and "Three Stooges"), but in 2003, $100,000 was a typical number for the upfront payment for use of a name or brand, with an additional $500 to $1,000 royalty payment per machine, per year being the norm.
Back then, IGT even spent $1 million on a Hollywood-style studio, complete with a hi-def camera, just for putting clips and animation sequences together for its slot-machine games, so that's another example of a hard cost you'd need to factor in when calculating the "most-expensive machine" ever placed on a casino floor.
Anyhow, returning to the present, or near enough, in 2012 there were 46,364 slot machines on the Las Vegas Strip and 11,124 downtown. The latter grossed $386,612,000 (or $95.22/slot/day). On the Strip, the gross was $2.9 billion and change, which works out to $171.86/slot/day. At those rates – and disregarding any additional licensing fees, while dedicating every penny of slot revenue to amortization – it would take 128 days to pay off a high-end Strip slot and 231 days to retire the cost of that same machine downtown. Lower-end machines, which are still pretty expensive, would take 99 days to amortize on the Strip and 178.5 days downtown. So, even a "cheap" slot is a pricey proposition.
