The Champions

The Champions Slot Review

A floodlit stadium at night, the reels hung in the goalmouth behind glowing blue netting, a striped pitch running along the bottom of the screen. The Champions takes that setting and does something almost no football slot attempts: it makes you aim before every spin. Choosing where the Bonus symbol has to land puts a decision on every click, and that, more than any prize on the board, is the reason to play it.

This is a Pragmatic Play slot on a 5×4 grid with 25 paylines, running at 96.51% RTP, low volatility and a top prize of 1,400x the bet. For more from the studio, our reviews of Spin & Score Megaways cover their other trip to the football pitch, and Big Bass Splash remains their biggest hit.

Steady payouts, a ladder worth climbing and penalties worth taking: there’s more here than the modest ceiling suggests.

Base Game & Features

Wins pay left to right across consecutive reels on the 25 fixed paylines, with only the highest combination counting on each line and multiple line wins added together. Stakes run from 0.25 to 250.00 per spin, adjusted through the bet menu with coins per line and coin value fields.

The low volatility rating means frequent, smaller payouts rather than long waits between hits. On the practical side, the space bar and enter key both start and stop a spin, and autoplay runs a set number of spins with a counter tracking what’s left.

Spin speed offers three settings: normal, quick and turbo. Small conveniences, but they matter in a game built around a ten-spin multiplier clock.

The Trophy wild appears on all reels and substitutes for every symbol except the Bonus symbol. It’s also the best payer on the grid, well clear of anything else. Symbol graphics even change to match your chosen team, a small touch that fits the theme.

All values below are multiples of the total bet for three, four and five of a kind:

• Trophy wild – 3.2x, 20x, 40x
• Soccer Ball – 2x, 8x, 20x
• Yellow Shirt – 1.2x, 4x, 10x
• Shoe – 1x, 2x, 8x
• Gloves – 1x, 1.6x, 6x
• Whistle – 0.6x, 1x, 5x
• A – 0.2x, 1x, 4x
• K and Q – 0.2x, 0.8x, 4x

That’s a compressed ladder, and the royals only really matter as small change between the bigger hits. Bonus wins are added to payline wins rather than replacing them.

The Champions Momentum Game & Penalty Shots Bonus

The Momentum Progressive Game

The unusual one. Before each spin you select a cell on the reels, marked with a circle, and if the Bonus symbol lands in that exact spot you’ve scored a goal. Goals drive the entire Momentum ladder, and the ladder is where the base game’s real winning power sits.

The game starts at Level 1 with a 1x multiplier. Every goal levels you up, and from then on a multiplier applies to the total win of the next ten spins. Score again while a multiplier is active and the spin counter resets to ten while the multiplier climbs:

• Level 2 – 2x
• Level 3 – 4x
• Level 4 – 6x
• Level 5 – 8x
• Level 6 – 10x
• Level 7 – 12x
• Level 8 – 14x
• Level 9 – 16x
• Level 10 – 18x
• Level 11 – 20x

At Level 11 the multiplier caps at 20x, but goals keep resetting the ten-spin clock with no limit on how many times that can happen. The reset rule cuts the other way too: fail to score within the ten spins a level-up awards and the whole thing drops back to Level 1 and a 1x multiplier. A ladder built over dozens of spins can vanish in one quiet spell.

The Momentum game is also suspended while the Penalty Shots Bonus plays out. One more thing to fix in mind before you touch the bet menu: changing your stake resets the ladder to Level 1 as well.

Chasing a higher multiplier at higher stakes means starting the climb again from the bottom, so the sensible habit is picking a stake early and staying with it.

Where you place the target matters, in a modest way. A cell in the middle rows of the middle reels is where the Bonus symbols live, since the symbol only appears on reels two, three and four; picking a corner of reel one can’t score at all. The game doesn’t pay for clever placement, only for landing the symbol in the spot you chose.

Penalty Shots Bonus Game

The Bonus symbol appears only on reels two, three and four. Land three of them and you’re through to the Penalty Shots Bonus Game, a shootout of five penalties where you pick one of four targets for each shot.

The awards step down sharply with every miss, which makes the fifth shot matter most when you’ve scored the first four:

• Five from five – 100x the total bet
• Four from five – 25x the total bet
• Three from five – 15x the total bet
• Two from five – 10x the total bet
• One from five – 5x the total bet

A perfect round of five, combined with a live Momentum multiplier, is where the game’s better results come from. The drops between tiers are steep: a single miss cuts the award by three quarters, and a second miss cuts it again. Miss two or more and the bonus lands closer to base-game money than a headline payout.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.7/10

Playing The Champions feels less like watching reels and more like taking part in a match. You’re aiming at a spot every single spin, guarding a multiplier against a ten-spin clock, and stepping up to take penalties yourself – that involvement is the one reason to pick it over any other football slot, and it holds up.

The Momentum ladder is the best thing here: it gives a low-volatility game a genuine sense of building towards something, and a 20x multiplier applied across ten spins of wins can quietly pay far more than the base table suggests.

Underneath, the material is modest. The paytable drops off hard below the wild, the shootout caps at 100x, and 1,400x is a small trophy by modern standards – all that engagement is working with limited raw material.

It suits players who enjoy steady play and a long build, who’d rather grind out a multiplier than wait on one huge hit. Anyone chasing four-figure swings will find this pitch too small. For the patient type who likes every spin to mean something, The Champions keeps you on the ball the whole way through.

The Champions FAQs

• What is the RTP of The Champions?

  The Champions runs at 96.51% RTP, which sits just above the typical average for an online slot.
• Is The Champions high volatility?

  No. The Champions is a low volatility slot, so it pays out more often in smaller amounts rather than offering rare large wins.
• What are the betting limits on The Champions?

  Stakes run from 0.25 up to 250.00 per spin, which covers casual players and higher rollers alike.
• How do you score goals in the Momentum Progressive Game?

  Before a spin you select a cell on the reels, marked with a circle. If the Bonus symbol lands in that selected spot, you score a goal, level up, and a multiplier applies to the total win of the next ten spins. Note that the Bonus symbol only appears on reels two, three and four, so a target cell on the outer reels can’t score.
• Does changing your bet reset the Momentum game in The Champions?

  Yes. Changing the bet value resets the Momentum Progressive Game back to Level 1 with a 1x multiplier, and failing to score within the ten spins awarded by a level-up does the same.
• How do you trigger the Penalty Shots Bonus Game?

  You need to land three Bonus symbols. The Bonus symbol only appears on reels two, three and four, and three of them anywhere on those reels starts the shootout.
• What does the Penalty Shots Bonus Game pay?

  You get five penalty shots, picking one of four targets each time. Scoring all five pays 100x the total bet, four pays 25x, three pays 15x, two pays 10x and one pays 5x.
• What does the wild substitute for in The Champions?

  The Trophy wild substitutes for all symbols except the Bonus symbol, and it appears on every reel. It’s also the game’s highest-paying symbol, worth up to 40x the total bet for five of a kind.