Lucky gambler bets $5 on casino slot machine — and wins big prize in California
On July 14, a 'valued' guest placed a $5 bet on the 5 Dragon Grand penny-slot machine, according to a Thunder Valley Casino Resort news release.
The gambler had no clue the bet would land them a $578,073 prize, the Lincoln-based casino said.
The machine, known for its 'vibrant graphics' is a fan favorite among 'slot enthusiasts,' the casino said.
'We are thrilled to celebrate this signification jackpot win with one of our valued guests,' said Dawn Clayton, the Thunder Valley Casino Resort General Manager. 'Moments like these are what make the energy on Thunder Valley's casino floor so special. On behalf of our entire team, congratulations to our guest, we are honored to see our guests experience these life-changing moments!'
This win marks the third jackpot at the casino in the past few weeks, the release said.
Dozens ran to the comments to congratulate the winner on Facebook, with one person saying, 'If I could just win a few thousand I'd be happy. Can't imagine a win like this.'
'I can imagine!!!! But it never happens,' another said.
Lincoln is about a 30-mile drive northeast from Sacramento.
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But as illustrated by the now infamous July 16 incident at a Coldplay concert in Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, that's not always the case for the featured individuals. When reactions tell the story It was the shot broadcast around the world – the TikTok'd footage of a couple at a Coldplay concert caught mid-cuddle. 'Either they're having an affair, or they're just very shy,' Coldplay singer Chris Martin quipped after seeing the video from the stage. The video of the July 16 incident at Gillette Stadium has received more than 129 million views on TikTok alone. The viral moment and its professional and personal fallout, Schwartz said, prompted reactions ranging from amusement and fascination to, for those who've been involved in similar circumstances, schadenfreude and relief. But it wouldn't have unfolded the way it did without the kiss cam. The couple seen on the screen "could have saved themselves from worldwide derision had they waved and looked like, 'This is no big deal,'" Schwartz said. "But they took the second instinct, which was to flee. And that was the funny one." 'It could have been a vanilla, fleeting moment,' Resnick agreed. 'However, their reaction told a story." The episode illustrated how kiss cams have provoked occasional embarrassment and controversy since their debut. In addition to outing potential infidelities, their use in the past has been accused of pressuring unwilling participants to take part and shamed for promoting homophobia by showing same-sex couples for laughs. It also showed the hazards of baring private matters in public in the age of kiss cams, smartphones and social media. 'The expectation of privacy at a public event has never existed, and today, with camera ubiquity, it's preposterous for anyone to take that position,' Resnick said. More often, though, kiss cams offer those attending live events the chance to score a cameo in their own experience, claiming part or even all of those 15 seconds of fame once foretold for all of us. The power of those moments, Resnick said, lies in their organic nature. 'Authenticity can't be staged in real time,' he said. 'It resonates in the social zeitgeist.' Kiss cams 'an important metric' of acceptance The kiss cam's evolution hasn't been without its stumbles. In 2015, Syracuse University discontinued its kiss cam feature after a letter to the local newspaper cited a pair of troubling instances at the football team's game against Wake Forest. Steve Port of Manlius, N.Y., wrote that the kiss cam segment had twice featured young women who expressed unwillingness to participate but were forced to anyway, either by their male counterpart or by surrounding students. Meanwhile, a dozen or so years have passed since some major league sports franchises were accused of promoting homophobia by using kiss cams to poke fun at other teams. In those cases, after featuring a series of smooching male-female couples, the kiss cam segments ended by focusing on two of the home team's rival players, or even fans – suggesting they might kiss, and that doing so would be comedic. As a fan of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars complained after such a segment in a 2013 letter to team owner Shahid Khan, initially reported by Outsports: 'Hilarious, right? No, and the message is clear. Jaguars are heterosexual and approved. The opponent is 'gay,' disapproved and the butt of a crude joke.' A year earlier, pitcher Brandon McCarthy of Major League Baseball's Oakland A's had similarly condemned the practice after a game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. 'They put two guys on the 'Kiss Cam' tonight,' McCarthy posted on the social platform now known as X. 'What hilarity!! (by hilarity I mean offensive homophobia). Enough with this stupid trend.' Later, McCarthy — now sporting director for the USL Championship's Phoenix Rising FC — told the San Francisco Chronicle: "If there are gay people who are coming to a game and seeing something like that, you can't assume they're comfortable with it. If you're even making a small group of people ... feel like outcasts, then you're going against what makes your model successful." Before long, franchises were striving to be more inclusive, and in 2015, MLB's New York Mets told the Huffington Post they would no longer feature opposing players in their kiss cam segments; that same year, the Dodgers included a gay couple in its kiss cam. 'Kiss cams are an important metric in measuring how acceptable certain people are in a given community,' said Stephanie Bonvissuto, an adjunct assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Hunter College and Brooklyn College, both part of the City University of New York system. In early 2017, the Ad Council's 'Love Has No Labels' campaign produced a commercial featuring kiss cam footage from that year's NFL Pro Bowl in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people had been killed seven months earlier in a mass shooting at gay nightclub Pulse. 'Kiss Cams have been a part of sports culture for years,' the opening text read, but at that game, it continued, they 'became part of something bigger.' The images showed pairs of individuals, outlined by a heart, broadcast on Camping World Stadium's giant screens. Friends were featured. So, too, were same-sex and interracial couples. Then the camera zoomed in on two women in the stands, one of them wearing a shirt reading 'Orlando survivor.' The two turned and kissed, to the crowd's delight. Still, Bonvissuto said it's still rare to see LGBTQ couples featured on kiss cams beyond Pride Night events. While cautioning that she hasn't seen any statistics on such representation, she said the footage she's viewed largely features white, able-bodied and seemingly cisgender individuals. 'Kiss cams act as a means to exclude certain people,' she said. 'They're incredibly important in thinking about representation — who we're seeing and not seeing.' 'Socially acceptable' voyeurism But for the most part, kiss cams have offered streams of harmless fun, fodder for highlight and blooper reels and glimpses into the relationships of everyone from fellow citizens to celebrities and sitting and former U.S. presidents. Kiss cams, said BYU's Darowski, offer audiences the constant thrill of knowing they could be onscreen combined with 'a socially acceptable, safe form of voyeurism that is traditionally taboo.' The presumed authenticity of couples' raw, unrehearsed reactions is key, too, he said. 'So much of our entertainment is highly mediated, edited and packaged for our consumption,' he said. It doesn't always play out as planned – and not all of it is necessarily genuine, thanks to some sports teams' creative minds. Many couples share crowd-pleasing kisses. Others, not so much. Some, snubbed by their companions, stomp off in a huff or peck adjacent fans instead, while youthful pairs looking to lock lips are thwarted by chaperoning adults. Whether any of it is staged doesn't matter much. Fans and audiences alike have enjoyed their moment in the limelight. Resnick, of 15 Seconds of Fame, recalled a moment in June 2024 after a Dallas Mavericks loss in game five of the NBA Finals. The arena cameras zeroed on a fan tearful over the outcome. While it wasn't part of the kiss cam feature, 'the minute he saw himself on the Jumbotron, he smiled and kissed the girl (who was) with him,' Resnick said. 'That's all you need to know about what those 15 seconds mean to fans.'
