Casinoportalen.com meets up with Boss Media

I (Søren) here from Casinoportalen.com visited the Swedish software producer BossMedia back in May 2003. The purpose of the visit was to hold a presentation regarding Danish bonus hunters as well as take a look at what was shaking up there in Sweden :-)

 

Boss Media

Boss Media is one of "The Big 4" producers of online casino gambling software. Boss Media is listed on the Swedish stock exchange; it´s largest shareholder is Mestöms AB, which currently holds 16% of Boss Medias shares. Boss Media had a turnover of over 114 million Swedish Crowns in 2002; most of these revenues were derived from software licenses as well as royalties paid from it´s licensed casinos.

 

My journey begins

I would start my journey by heading north to Grenaa in order to catch the ferry to Varberg in Sweden. The ferry was set to sail at 14:45 on Monday, and the weather forcasted was for rain. This not being the optimal setting for a positive experience had me a bit concerned. My concerns were quickly put to rest as soon as the ship began to sail from Grenaa harbor. I looked off onto the horizon; saw what was quickly confirmed to be a clearing sky. After a few bumps through the Kattegat Sea, I grabbed myself a cold beer and a fat sandwich and thought "it really doesn't get much better than this".
 

I arrived in Varberg after a 4 hour sail. The weather was perfect for following a computer generated map to navigate our way through part of the Swedish countryside for the next 2 hours and 55 minutes. I were expected to arrive in Vãxjõ at 10 PM on Monday evening. Because of the wide open spaces in Sweden, I arrived at my destination at 9 PM, even with a few stops along the way to take some snapshots of the wonderful nature that is Sweden.
 

I

quickly found the Theatre Park Hotel, dropped my bags in the room and proceeded to fill my bellie with food in order to secure a good night's sleep in anticipation for my big day at Boss Media on Tuesday.

I had to look hard to find tjhe entrance to Boss Media:

After climbing the stairs to the 3rd floor (even though there was an elevator, which the active Swedes choose not to use), we checked in at the reception desk.

I was given a cup of coffee and readied myself for my presentation on Danish online casino bonus hunters. My end goal was to get the Swedish giants to accept Danes as a part of their bonus awards programs and to learn more about the casino software Boss Media.

I was very pleasantly surprised at the amount of people who showed up to hear my talk. Almost every aspect of the organization was represented. After explaining to them my views on bonus hunting and what it means to online players in Denmark, I began to field questions, of which their were plenty. The clock quickly struck 11.30 and many of the participants needed to move on to other daily work tasks, for that reason, we ended our Q&A session.

Jeanette Ström was ready to give me the grand tour of Boss Media. Boss Media currently has a workforce of 110 employees who work in the fields of sound, game design, web design, CRM, Webdollar, support, marketing, sales and administration

Here you can see a developer testing a game and a mechanical toy is of a gaming machine found throughout hotels in Scandinavia where you can surf for information and of course play some online casino games.

Boss Media is very advanced in the development of software to cellular phones and hand held computers. I received a demonstration of Gold Club Casino on a hand held which I was allowed to play online via GRPS, just like I was would be playing on an ordinary computer. The software ran great and I was overly impressed with how much capability they had with regards to graphics on such a small machine.

One thing that I have always complained about regarding the Boss Media software was the lack of Video Poker games that are provided by Boss Media. According to Tony Persson, Boss Media will soon introduce 15 new games of VideoPoker and Slots, of which I was fortunate enough to get a little taste of. I can attest to the fact that these new games from Boss Media, will blow you out of the water with what you will experience. The following pictures have not yet been made public;

After a great lunch, I was to meet with Per Karlsson, who is the manager of Boss Media's very own casino, Gold Club Casino. I brought with me a host of questions from our very own Jan of Casinoportalen.com that I was prepared to toss at Per.

Some of my questions required a bit of assistance, at that point Per brought in Sales manager Robert Skogh and the developer of Boss Media's Random Number Generator Roger Jönsson

Interview with Boss Media - Actual Q&A:

Søren: Why can't Swedes play at Boss Media's casinos?

Per: Legally, there is nothing that stops Swedes from playing at some of Boss Media's Casino's. WE at Boss Media have chosen not to allow Swedish players access to our games simply because we are a listed company on the Swedish stock exchange. This is in addition to an agreement that we reached with the Swedish gaming authority's monopoly, basically to keep us from competing with them in Sweden.

Søren: How many Boss Media Casinos are there?

Per: I believe the number lies around 40 online casinos.

Søren: What happens to older Boss Media Casinos, which have either 'died' or almost ceased to exist ?

Per: We generally have an agreement with a faulting casino on how we can buy back or take over casinos and their licenses if such problems should arise.

Søren: What's all the talk about William Hill opening up a Boss Media casino?

Robert: It is true that William Hill has purchased a license with us. I can't go into much detail, but we currently have a so called API (Application Protocol Interface), which can be described as a bridge between William Hills new Boss Media software and their currently existing CryptoLogic Casino. This now gives the casino manager the possibility of using a super administrative program to overview/control both casinos. The program is not completely finished, but we are shooting for a finish date towards the end of summer.

Søren: How much does a Boss Media Casino cost?

Robert: Prices can vary; I will not say that we are among the cheapest of casinos and definitely among the most expensive. A casino can vary in cost from € 250.000 to € 500.000, all depending on what the buyer or casino licensee wishes to provide for its players.

Søren: What might you get for that kind of money?

Robert: A casino license, software and a website to start. We currently have around 47 games to choose from and the basic casino package allows the buyer to choose 10 of these games.

Søren: After paying for the software and the games, are your buyers squared up with you?

Robert: Every month a royalty is paid to us for the use of our software. This amount usually equates to 30%. If in addition to this, the licensee would like for us to handle their customer service support, an additional € 7.500 is charged each month. On top of this 1% of the transactions is then added as a cost to web dollar for handling financial transactions.

Søren: How do you make rnadom numbers and a fair casino game?

Roger: It truly isn't possible for a computer to come up with a coincidental account of numbers. A computer always calculates its numbers based on mathematical statistics. These statistics remain constant regardless of the complexity of the calculating process. I have been responsible for the development of Boss Medias Random Number Generator 'RNG', also for how one can receive a random card at one of our casinos and for how a roulette ball can randomly land on any given number upon any spin of the wheel. The core to our Random number generator is simply a little box attached to a computer via a port called an Orion TRNG. This TRNG interfaces (wide noise), so that a Random number generator can be read from inside the computer.

The more technically interested can read more about the process by researching how these mechanisms work. Boss Medias RNG is tested over billions of results that are constantly monitored for accuracy in our 100% random results. You can follow up your interest by looking at the following flow chart in

The day's last meeting was with Pia-Karin Åkesson and Jesper Svensson, who work on a daily basis with the development of Boss Medias web design for its own casinos.
After a long and interesting day, I had the opportunity to relax before going out to dinner. At dinner, I had the opportunity to Peter Bertilsson.

Peter Bertilsson is the Director of Boss Media and Krister Bergström, Boss Medias vice Director. Peter was an entertaining man who previously resided in Denmark. After speaking in English to the staff at Boss Media throughout the day (which was truly a bit funny since Danish and Swedish should be similar), it was nice to relax and have a conversation with a Swede in Danish.

I had an extremely interesting day at Boss Media. They were courteous, open and very professional, which in truth is a contrast to many others in the industry. They were very forthcoming with information about their organization and its structure.

Thanks for a great experience Boss Media.

Søren
Casinoportalen.com