Imagine you are launching a new online casino. Maybe you are. You’d have a list of things that you need to ensure that you are running smoothly and are set up to compete. A PAM platform, a nice front-end design and maybe even some games. 

But one thing you will certainly need is a hosting provider to ensure that you actually get online. It might seem simple, but it is crucial. If you don’t have a reliable hosting provider, you are not always going to be reliably online. Then it’s a recipe for disaster. 

Enter Internet Vikings. The Stockholm-based iGaming hosting provider has over 30 data centres globally to service customers around the world. It has grown its revenue over five times over in the last three years and CEO Rickard Vikström tells SBC News that it has never had any downtime across all their data centres. 

“It’s just not possible,” Vikström says. “Our data centres are not connected with each other. The simplest solution is usually the best solution. If you don’t have any connections between the data centres, there’s no dependency between each of them. 

“From an engineering standpoint it’s very boring.There’s nothing happening that shouldn’t happen, and that’s what made us successful.” 

Internet Vikings prides itself on its ability to provide iGaming customers with resilient hosting with a personal touch. As an iGaming-specialised provider, Vikström says that Internet Vikings has a competitive edge over some of the larger, more generalist hosting providers, who can sometimes treat customers as just a number in their CRM. 

He outlines: “We deliver a personal connection; we know the challenges for the gaming industry. We know the issues they have. It’s that simple. To solve those challenges, for example latency in certain regions or regulatory concerns in others, particularly in North America is hard. 

“With our customers, we are working with them to understand what they do, what they want to achieve and where they’re coming from. My opinion is that the hyperscalers cannot accommodate; they don’t provide that personal touch.” 

Throughout his conversation with SBC News, Vikström’s syntax is reflective of a company that knows its place and is confident in its ability to deliver specifically to its customers.

Phrases such as “it’s really that simple” underscores this confidence and this is because, as the CEO says, Internet Vikings is “super focused”. 

“We’re focused on one thing,” he adds. “We don’t do anything else. There’s a lot of companies starting to branch out into different things. We don’t do that. We do one thing and do it amazingly well.” 

Equipped with this confidence, and the profitable growth to back it up, Vikström identifies where operators are commonly going wrong when he engages with them as prospects. 

He usually speaks to operators who are with the so-called “hyperscalers” and he comes across the same issue almost every time. He says that operators are vastly overspending on their hosting provisions. 

Vikström remarks: “Hosting should cost around 2-3% of revenue, maximum. If you pay more than that, you’re doing something wrong. I recently spoke to someone who paid 15+% of the revenue proposal. That’s where they ended up by not taking strategic decisions early enough.” 

One reason Vikström identifies for this overspend is that there is a lack of procurement in the buying process, with developers allowed to spend on hosting without the approval of management. He says this is a prime example of a lack of strategic thinking in the sector. 

In a further bid to simplify the process, the firm also looks to keep its pricing consistent globally. That is regardless of whether the data centre is in Colorado, Frankfurt, Dublin or São Paulo. 

“I talked to someone in São Paulo who was with a competitor. He was saying that it’s so expensive to do something in São Paulo, because it’s three times that expensive as in Europe. My answer was that we have the same pricing wherever you are. If you’re in Sweden, if you’re in Colombia or Pennsylvania, it doesn’t matter.” 

With its focused approach and gaming-specific nature, Internet Vikings will look to build on the growth it has experienced in the last three years. The firm has a big focus on North America, but also has data centres in Europe, Latin America and Asia. Exhibiting at industry conferences is one part of this growth strategy, but most of all it is about demonstrating the ability of its solutions. 

As Vikström neatly concludes: “As long as you have a great product, as long as you have a great setup, which we do, it’s just more of that super focus. It’s really that easy.”

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