Exclusive Q&A w/ Christopher Grönlund, Head of Acquisition and PR at Winlandia

Over the past 10 years, Finlandia has become one of the most popular online casino brands among Finnish players. But as the country looks to move away from its monopoly model and open up its market to other brands for the first time, the team behind Finlandia took the decision to rebrand to Winlandia and focus on other regulated markets.

If Finland follows the same path as the Netherlands, this could prove to be a shrewd move. But in the meantime, the operator now faces the task of driving brand awareness in highly competitive markets such as the UK and Sweden, where it has just gone live for the first time. To learn more about how Winlandia is going about this, we sat down with Christoffer Grönlund, Head of Acquisition and PR.

Can you tell us more about your recent rebrand from Finlandia to Winlandia? What was the driving force behind this?

Finlandia launched back in 2014 and over the following nine years became one of the most popular online casino brands among players in Finland. The team worked incredibly hard to build the casino and brand from scratch, tailoring it to the needs and preferences of Finnish players. This ultimately brought about tremendous success for the brand and the business, but as we all know, Finland has been something of a grey market over that time. In 2022, there was increasing noise being made by the government that it would look to end the monopoly market, embrace regulation, and officially open its doors to other operators that it deemed suitable to hold a licence.

Similar things have happened in markets such as the Netherlands, but with operators that had previously been targeting the market blocked out for a couple of years after the market was regulated. We don’t know what is going to happen in Finland just yet, but we took the decision to err on the side of caution, rebranding to Winlandia in 2023 and focusing on regulated markets including the UK and Denmark, and recently going live in Sweden. We operate on local licences in these jurisdictions and also hold a Malta licence.

What’s changed following the rebrand?

Over the ten years that we operated under the Finlandia brand; we’d pretty much cracked the code for offering the online casino experience that players were seeking. This experience remains unchanged, the only big difference being our name and expansion into international regulated markets. So, what can players expect at Winlandia? We have a casino lobby packed with more than 7,000+ slots, jackpots, table games, instant wins, poker and live dealer, as well as a fully localised payment stack for each market – this includes pay and play in Sweden. We like to welcome new players with bonuses that add true value to their first few days and weeks with us, and then reward them for sticking around with more promotions and offers. Of course, we take safe gaming and responsible gambling incredibly seriously and go to great lengths to ensure our customers can stay in control of their play at all times.

How will you ensure that Winlandia stands out from other brands in the markets you target?

We already have a head start thanks to Finlandia and the large and loyal player base that we were able to build over ten years. But Winlandia opens the door to more markets, and we have to be able to engage with players in each of these jurisdictions. To do this, we plan to offer one of the largest online casino game portfolios out there – we are on track to surpass 7,000 games from a huge selection of providers from the popular power players through to new studios making a name for themselves. Jackpot slots are a differentiator for us, and we look to be the go-to destination for jackpot games in each market. In Sweden, for example, we are offering more than 290 jackpot games to our players.

What made Sweden a priority market for Winlandia?

Our experience is very much rooted in the Nordics (the founding and operating team is from the Nordics, too), and we really understand the market and what players are looking for. I am Swedish, and have considerable experience as a Swedish country manager, responsible for Swedish Affiliate Management for two of the biggest Gaming operators in Sweden. Sweden is a regulated market, so aligns with our regulated market approach, and there continues to be huge demand for online casino among consumers. We believe our deep understanding of player preferences, our shiny new brand and our superior online casino product and experience will allow us to hit the ground running in Sweden and for Winlandia to quickly claim a decent share of the market.

We take a position as a No Bonus Casino in Sweden, and we are going for this niche with our no wagering offer.

Effective marketing is the key to unlocking success for any new brand. How will you build brand awareness in Sweden and the other jurisdictions you target?

The team behind Winlandia are marketing specialists with a mix of experience from both the operator and affiliate side of the industry. In Sweden, we are going to leverage the power of affiliates to drive new traffic to our brand from day one and will work exclusively with a big-name affiliate for the first four weeks before partnering with other reputable publishers in the market. We are taking a quality-over-quantity approach here – we want to work with a small number of premium affiliates to bring players to Winlandia that are primed and ready to covert. In addition to this, we will be running paid ad campaigns across Google and social media and have a strong programmatic and SEO strategy in place. This is all underpinned by data and taking an analyse and optimise approach to marketing activity. This is our blueprint for all markets, including Sweden.

Are you eyeing up any new markets beyond Sweden?

Absolutely. So right now, we are active in the UK and Sweden and are poised to make a move in Denmark. Our new 2.0 design will be launched across all markets. Then we will move on to phase two of our international expansion which will see Winlandia go live under our Malta Gaming Authority licence. Of course, the jewel in the crown will be a return to Finland – as soon as licence applications open, we plan to be among the first to submit our paperwork and secure a permit to once again offer Finnish players the most entertaining online casino experience in the market. The biggest advantage of rebranding to Winlandia was that it gave us the opportunity to go global with the same compelling experience that made us the go-to online casino for players in Finland. Ultimately, this means there’s no limit to the regulated markets we can enter, and this means our growth potential is exponential.