Focus, Simplicity and Trust
How Internet Vikings became the fastest-growing specialist hosting provider in the United States
Internet Vikings has rapidly established itself as the go-to regulated hosting provider for U.S. iGaming and sports betting operators. CEO Rickard Vikström tells G3 how a laser- focused strategy, European precision and customer trust turned a niche infrastructure venture into one of the fastest-growing companies in the sector.
Internet Vikings has become known as the fastest-growing specialist hosting provider in the U.S. What’s been the secret behind that growth?
Focus. We’ve stayed disciplined about doing one thing, hosting, and doing it exceptionally well. Te market is large enough that we don’t need to diversify into adjacent products or services. Tat focus, combined with delivering what we promise, has been key. Some competitors lost sight of that, and it opened the door for us.
Was there a moment when you realised that the U.S. expansion was really going to work?
Yes, around the summer of 2023. We’d been scaling since 2021, building gradually, state by state, and by then the momentum was undeniable. Once we reached a certain customer volume, the economics began to make sense. Hosting is capital-intensive, you only start to make money once the racks are full. When we signed major deployments with GAN and Aristocrat, that’s when it clicked that the model was scaling exactly as planned.
How far along the journey are you now?
Still at the beginning, honestly. We’ve captured less than 10 per cent of the U.S. regulated hosting market. Te largest player holds about 40 per cent, and a big portion of operators still host internally, sometimes literally in their own basements. Tat means there’s huge room to grow; we estimate 300 per cent growth potential over the next few years.
62
What’s your professional background, and how did you end up specialising in this niche?
I’ve worked in hosting since I was 18, managing Linux servers and infrastructure. My business partner Victor Jerlin came from the iGaming side, he started in operations at
Expekt.com/Tain Operations and later moved to Malta.
In 2008 we built a company focused on affiliate hosting and domain management. Around 2019, we saw a gap on the operator side: some were hosting multimillion-euro casinos on shared services like GoDaddy. Tat showed us how little understanding there was of proper hosting, and it’s where Internet Vikings began to evolve into the regulated-market specialist it is today.
You often say Internet Vikings is “large enough to scale with big operators, but small enough that customers never become a line in a spreadsheet.” How do you maintain that balance?
By staying operational. Both Victor and I are hands-on, from building stands at shows to visiting data centres and talking directly with clients. Communication keeps the company human. Te danger for growing firms is chasing shiny new products and losing focus. We deliberately resist that. We stick to hosting and make sure we do it perfectly.
Tree years ago, when we doubled down on the U.S., we streamlined governance. We now have a chairman, Jesper Kärrbrink, and otherwise it’s just Victor and me. Our strategy fits on one page: build a great
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194
