TV and Music Themed Slots Worth Knowing

A licensed slot is sold on a feeling before it is sold on a feature. A studio pays for a name, a soundtrack or a set of characters, and the bet is that you will feel something before the reels even move.

TV and music themed slots also age differently from film tie-ins. A band's catalogue does not go out of date the way a summer blockbuster does, and a long-running series gives designers years of material. Below are eight games that are worth knowing about, either because they are good examples of the genre or because the story behind them is interesting. None of this is a tip to play them; it is a guide to what you are looking at if you come across them.

What a licence actually changes in a slot

Under the branding, a TV or music slot is built from the same parts as any other video slot: reels, a random number generator, a paytable and bonus features. The licence buys the right to use names, faces, logos and recordings, and it also shapes the features, because designers try to turn moments from the show or songs from the album into mechanics.

That last part is where branded slots succeed or fail. A slot that pastes a logo onto a generic game feels thin within ten spins. One that builds its bonus round around something fans actually remember can hold attention for much longer. We looked at the same question for cinema in our list of movie-themed online slots, and the pattern is identical.

Four slots built on television series

Game of Thrones (Microgaming, December 2014) was built under a licence from HBO. It is a five-reel, three-row game where you choose between 243 ways to win or 15 paylines. The free spins feature is the clever bit: three Iron Throne scatters let you pick a house. House Baratheon gives 8 free spins with a 5x multiplier, Lannister 10 spins at 4x, Stark 14 spins at 3x and Targaryen 18 spins at 2x. Fewer spins with a bigger multiplier or more spins with a smaller one, which is a neat way to let players pick their own risk while staying true to the show.

Vikings (NetEnt, November 2018) is based on the TV series of the same name. It starts as a 5x3 grid with 243 ways, then during its Raid Spins expands to seven reels and five rows with 78,125 ways. NetEnt's own game page lists an RTP of 96.05%. The Shield Wall feature, where mystery symbols land as a cluster, is the sort of mechanic that only makes sense because of the theme.

Narcos (NetEnt, May 2019) came out of a licence with Gaumont, the studio behind the series, first announced at the ICE trade show in London in 2018. It is a 243-ways game with features named after the show's violence: a Drive-By that turns high-value symbols wild, and a Locked Up bonus triggered by three or more Locked Up symbols on the same row. NetEnt lists the RTP at 96.23% and the maximum win at 1,000x the stake. It is grimmer than most slots, which I think is to its credit.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Megaways (Big Time Gaming, November 2018) is the British one. The quiz show first aired on ITV on 4 September 1998 with Chris Tarrant, ran until 2014, and returned in 2018 with Jeremy Clarkson for its 20th anniversary. The slot arrived the same autumn, first as a two-week exclusive at LeoVegas until 28 November 2018, and combined Big Time Gaming's Megaways reels with its cascading wins. It was the studio's first branded game, which gives it a small place in slot history too.

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NetEnt Rocks: the music series that set the pattern

If one studio defined music slots, it was NetEnt with its NetEnt Rocks line. It started with Guns N' Roses, launched on 21 January 2016 on mobile and desktop at the same time. The game uses riffs from five tracks ("Welcome to the Jungle", "Sweet Child O' Mine", "Paradise City", "November Rain" and "Chinese Democracy"), and NetEnt's chief product officer at the time, Simon Hammon, called it the company's "most ambitious ever game".

Jimi Hendrix followed in April 2016. This one is the best example of turning songs into features. The Purple Haze feature turns low-value symbols wild for a spin. Crosstown Traffic free spins use wild reels that shift one reel to the left each spin. Little Wing free spins drop three to five overlay wilds on the reels. NetEnt lists the RTP at 96.90% on 20 fixed paylines, with a modest maximum win of 400x the stake.

Motörhead arrived in September 2016 and goes the other way: 76 fixed paylines, a Mystery Reel and a Bomber feature that shares its name with the band's 1979 album. NetEnt's page gives 96.98% RTP and a top win of 600x.

Ozzy Osbourne Video Slots joined the series in November 2019, built around licensed music from his solo catalogue. Its "Symbol Charge Up" fires before every re-spin and free spin and can hand out coin wins, wilds, multipliers or symbol upgrades.

The eight games side by side

Six of the eight come from one studio. That says less about the rest of the industry than about how hard NetEnt pushed branded games in the second half of the 2010s.

Things to check before you press spin

A famous name tells you nothing about how a slot pays. Two points matter more than the soundtrack.

• The RTP in the game's own help screen. The figures above are the ones the studios publish, but many slots come in several RTP versions and the casino chooses which one to offer. The help or paytable screen shows the version you are actually playing. Our explainer on what RTP and volatility really mean goes through why that matters.
• How swingy the game is. A 600x maximum win like Motörhead's and a 1,000x one like Narcos's describe very different games, even if the RTP is similar. Studios rarely publish a volatility rating, so the maximum win and the size of the features are often the best clue.

Online slots in Great Britain are for adults only (18+) and are regulated by the Gambling Commission. Since 2025 the maximum stake on an online slot is £5 per spin, or £2 if you are 18 to 24, and that applies to branded games exactly as it does to any other. If a slot is more fun to listen to than to play, that is fine too. Keeping a budget and a time limit is covered on our responsible gambling page.

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Why music slots outlast TV ones

Here is a side point I have never seen a studio address directly. A TV slot is tied to the moment its show is on air. When the series ends, the slot slowly turns into a period piece. Music slots skip that problem. "Sweet Child O' Mine" sounded the same in the 2016 slot as it did on the radio decades earlier, and it will sound the same in another ten years.

There is a catch, and it is a dull one: licences expire. A branded slot can leave casino lobbies when its deal ends and is not renewed, so a game you remember may be missing the next time you look. Often there is no announcement; the tile is simply gone.

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