Part Two of our in-depth feature on the Big Four casino software providers takes us inside Boss Media -- a Swedish company with a $420 million market cap and plans to power the first government owned Internet casino in Europe. Click here for Part 1: Starnet Systems - From Porno to Pai Gow.

Originally intending to run a chain of Internet casinos such as the wholly-owned Gold Club Casino, Boss Media AB (Sweden) has changed direction considerably since they first entered the online casino business in the spring of 1997. While Gold Club remains a Boss Media property and the source of many casino management lessons for them, the company now follows the end-to-end, or turn-key, provider model that is common to all the major casino licensors.

The end-to-end provider approach is straightforward: the parent company develops and sells Internet gaming software while subsidiaries -- in this case Boss Casinos Ltd. and WebDollar Ltd. located in the Caribbean nation of Antigua & Barbuda -- provide the peripheral services and transaction processing necessary to operate and maintain licensee casinos. Long established companies like Boss Media and relative newcomers alike are taking this approach to the sales and service of their casino licenses. The end result is that the development branch of the parent company typically remains in the home country while hosting, support and the legally contentious transaction services are safely located "off shore".

In this turn-key scenario the casino manager is typically only responsible for marketing and promotions, and even those are sometimes provided by the licensor. Boss Media's Casino.com is a case in point. Presented as a gaming information and news portal, Casino.com is essentially an infomercial specifically designed to spark player interest in online gaming and funnel them through to Boss Media licensees. For all this a licensee pays Boss Media USD$300,000 in up-front fees plus ongoing royalty payments of 30-35% of net gaming revenue. Additionally, Boss Media charges $10,000 a month for operational services and WebDollar charges 1% plus bank charges on the gross amount processed.

For Boss Media, their recently released interim financial report tells the story: net sales in the first two quarters of 2000 have doubled over the first two quarters of '99 to top 8.6 million USD; net profit is up 250% to 2.5 million; casino licenses have doubled since December '99; and current staffing levels are up 50% from June '99 with the parent company now employing 54 in Växjö, Sweden and 30 in its two subsidiaries, Boss Casinos and Webdollar.

Although very much in the e-gaming public's eye today, Boss Media was seldom in the news before its public offering in the summer of '99. Past CEO Lars Mansson's approach seems to have been quintessentially conservative: build the product, establish the infrastructure, gather a tight group of licensees and venture out into public trade once everything is in place. Boss Media joined the Swedish stock exchange in June 1999 -- ticker symbol BOSS.ST -- where share prices hovered below the USD$2 mark until late October '99. Then, starting in early November, share value started to climb and didn't stop until mid-March this year when it peaked at over USD$10 -- a 700% increase in less than 6 months.

"With sustained good future prospects, I feel it is the right time to pass the office on to a younger president," said Mansson shortly after the peak. With that the reins where handed to Johan Sigvardsson, 33, who was named the new President and CEO after serving as Boss Media's chief financial officer since the company's first days. "My primary mission was to introduce the corporation on the stock exchange," said Mansson who will move on to a position in the international wing of the company.

The stock's success has not gone unrecognized. Among Boss Media's stockholders are such names as Robert Fleming & Co. -- one of the largest UK investment trust managers, The Chase Manhattan Bank of Great Britain, Merrill Lynch International and Liechtensteinische Landesbank, the national bank of Liechtenstein. Boss Media split the stock at 5-to-1 in May and now, with approximately 58 million shares in circulation, the market capitalization hovers around 420 million USD.

Boss Media's undeniable success is fascinating in its own right, but doubly so since their game design and marketing decisions often appear to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Pundits in the gambling industry often refer to the crucial role that comps -- freebies -- play in attracting players but player bonuses have traditionally been few and far between at Boss Media casinos. Though this is changing the point remains that Boss Media casinos have long opted out of the race for bigger and better player bonuses, relying instead on the quality of their product to convince players to play.

What Boss Media software offers the player is a rock-solid gaming environment with exceptional graphics and a good user interface, 24-hour customer service, audited payouts and professional casino management. And through Web sites like Casino.com and CasinoWire.com Boss Media extends player services to gaming information, tips and news. For many online gambling enthusiasts it's an irresistable combination. A recent software release adds multi-player options and chat features to the mix, with the inevitable tweaks in game graphics and multimedia. Previews of the new multi-player Seven Card Stud and Roulette can be seen at Boss Media's home site. The full version 2.0 package is available for download from Gold Club.

New software notwithstanding, the real news for anyone watching is that Boss Media will work with Svenska Spel, a gaming company owned by the Swedish Government, to develop custom Internet casino software for Svenska Spel's subsidiary, Casino Cosmopol. "This will also be the first government owned Internet casino in Europe," says Ulrika Persson of Investor Relations at Boss Media.

It's clear that Boss Media is proud of this new initiative and it's not hard to see why. While other providers are wrestling local governments and police, Boss Media has formed an alliance with their national government that could give them an unprecedented level of security and stability. It represents another raising of the bar in the e-gaming business and provides Boss Media an edge that the competition can only envy.