Is the $1 million Survivor prize increasing permanently? According to Jeff Probst, it is—but there’s a twist.

If there’s one thing that’s stayed consistent over the last 26 years of Survivor, it’s the $1 million grand prize at the end of the game. But according to Jeff Probst, that’s also about to become permanently uncertain…

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the longtime host and showrunner revealed just how far the show is ready to go with the open era—and it seems all future players can potentially expect a lot more than the standard $1 million on the line.

“We took an idea from [Survivor] 50,” Probst reveals, “this idea of a million dollar coin flip. We said, ‘What if we put that in the show every season?’ And every season, one player gets to flip a coin, and if you call it correctly, we’ll add a million dollars to the post for that season.”

He then went on to explain that—as in Survivor 50—if the player calls the coin flip incorrectly, they are immediately eliminated from the game. But they can’t just leave it like it was for last season in the open era, can they? So moving forward, if the player doesn’t win the coin flip, they’re eliminated and the extra $1 million prize money gets added to the pot for the next season’s coin flip.

After he shared this idea, The Hollywood Reporter’s Terry Terrones was quick to double check that it’s just an idea he has and not actually something that we’ll see in Survivor 51.

“It’s in 51,” Probst confirms. “And it blew [the players’] minds in the best way.”

So this means that every future season not only has the chance to be a $2 million prize season, but some could even be $3 million or $4 million seasons, depending on how lucky the previous coin flippers were.

Because if the coin flipper of Survivor 51 doesn’t win the extra $1 million, the coin flipper of Survivor 52 could potentially add $2 million to the standard prize (for a total of $3 million). And if the Survivor 52 coin flipper also doesn’t call it correctly, that would mean the Survivor 53 coin flipper has a chance to add $3 million to their final prize pot (for a total of $4 million), and so on.

For a long time, Survivor was known as the G.O.A.T. of reality competition show prizes because of their $1 million guaranteed jackpot for the winner at the end of the season. But it’s been 26 years since Survivor first introduced that prize amount and except for two anniversary seasons—Winners at War and Survivor 50—there hasn’t been any change to it, until now. Because, let’s be honest, today, $1 million is technically worth about half of what it was worth back in 2000 when Survivor first aired.

And now compared to other reality competition shows that have come on the scene, Survivor no longer reigns supreme in the prize pot department. In fact, MrBeast—who invented the concept of the coin flip—gave away over $10 million to the winner of season 1 of his Amazon Prime Video show, Beast Games, and another $5 million to the winner of season 2.

And the potential increase in prize could also lead to more auditions and submissions to Survivor’s casting which could start to give us players more similarly aligned with the early game castaways who weren’t Super Fans, but just people who wanted $1 million.

It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out both logistically for the show as well as experientially for the players and the viewers at home.

Do you think Survivor 51 will end with a $1 million prize? Or will no one be able to flip a coin like Rick Devens?

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