Bet365 boss Denies Coates takes a £170million pay cut – but STILL earned nearly £300m last year


Bet365 boss Denise Coates has taken a £170million pay cut, accounts reveal – but still earned nearly £300m last year.

The betting chief’s salary fell from £421m to £250m in the financial year to March 28, 2021, as the pandemic stalled growth at the gambling giant, but she also received a share of more than 50% of the company’s £97.5 million dividend.

The figure takes her pay and dividends to around £1.3 billion for the past five years.

Bet365 boss Denise Coates has taken a £170million pay cut, accounts reveal - but still earned nearly £300m last year

Bet365 boss Denise Coates has taken a £170million pay cut, accounts reveal – but still earned nearly £300m last year

How Denise Coates built up her family betting firm

Denise Coates bought the domain name bet365 on eBay in 2001 for £20,000 and began operating a dot.com betting business from a portable cabin in Stoke. 

Mrs Coates completed the move from the Portakabin office, borrowing £15m from the Royal Bank of Scotland secured on her family’s estate of betting shops. And the move paid off.  

Mrs Coates is now the majority shareholder in Bet365, a global company which has benefited from tighter regulations on the industry in other countries.  In 2017, the former University of Sheffield student who graduated with a first class degree, was paid £265million. 

The bulk of her pay increase was due to a jump the salaries her company decided to pay out in 2018. It increased overall wages from £490m to £646m. 

The family’s fortune was estimated at £7 billion in the latest Sunday Times ‘Rich List’ and the betting firm’s £30million HQ employs thousands in Stoke. The business said it had ‘increased remuneration for individuals that have been key to the development of the overarching corporate strategy’.

She took a large share of the £90m paid out in dividends in 2018, £80m of which went to four directors of the company, which include Mrs Coates.

Mrs Coates and her husband Richard Smith remain fiercely private and refuse to discuss their private lives, or backgrounds.

The pair set up a £185 million charitable foundation funding a variety of worthy causes at home and overseas. It provides bursaries for less well-off students, supports a hospice for cancer sufferers and has helped victims of natural disasters. 

They have one child of their own and adopted four girls from the same family. 

Ms Coates, one of Britain’s richest women, founded the online gambling company in the early 2000s in Stoke-on-Trent after spotting the potential of internet betting to revolutionise the industry.

The accounts of Companies House show Bet365 revenues were broadly flat, inching to £2.818 billion for the first year of the pandemic, compared with £2.811 billion in the previous year.

Bosses at the firm said a surge in online gaming demand helped offset significant disruption to sporting schedules during the year.

‘At the start of the period we experience the almost complete cessation of sporting events, however by the end of the first half of the year, we saw the resumption of sports with the vast majority of European football leagues managing to conclude their domestic seasons,’ the company said.

Meanwhile, operating profit increased by 47% year-on-year to £285.5 million, which it said was particularly driven by reduced pay packets for directors.

The Coates family, which own Stoke City football club, are also Britain’s biggest taxpayers. The business paid £615million to the Exchequer in 2019/20, on top of an estimated £220 million tax bill on Mrs Coates’s personal income.

She has previously told how her family had been the driver for her success.

Mrs Coates said: ‘I am from the area and apart from my time at University, have always lived here.

‘There are huge tax advantages to taking the business offshore, but, it has “My family will say that I have always been driven and have always had the desire to be the very best at whatever I was doing.

‘I am hugely indebted to my father for always believing in me and to my brother John who runs the business alongside me.

‘A further key to bet365’s success, is our fantastic and loyal group of employees who have worked with me over the last 12 years in Stoke.’

In 2019/20 Bet365 also donated £85m to Mrs Coates’s charity foundation, which has previously donated to Oxfam and the Douglas Macmillan Hospice.

But the Coates have been criticised for not diverting more cash to fund gambling addiction treatment. In 2019/20 Bet365 pledged just £868,000 to GambleAware, which collects donations for treatment and research, although this is expected to rise to close to around £14million this year.

Ms Coates, one of Britain's richest women, founded the online gambling company in the early 2000s in Stoke-on-Trent after spotting the potential of internet betting to revolutionise the industry. Pictured, in 2012 Mrs Coates was awarded a CBE

Ms Coates, one of Britain’s richest women, founded the online gambling company in the early 2000s in Stoke-on-Trent after spotting the potential of internet betting to revolutionise the industry. Pictured, in 2012 Mrs Coates was awarded a CBE

The coronavirus pandemic stalled growth at global gambling giant Bet365 last year

The coronavirus pandemic stalled growth at global gambling giant Bet365 last year

The revelations came amidst growing concern about the impact of the pandemic on Britain’s gambling epidemic, after the losses suffered by families stuck at home in lockdown rocketed. 

She has spent her enormous wealth on a massive country estate, offering ‘silly money’ to buy up neighbours’ land for the £90million build.

Plans for the sprawling home, set in 52 acres of Cheshire parkland, included an artificial lake, sunken tennis courts, stables, ornamental gardens, workers’ cottages and a boathouse.

She also planted 200 trees, erected a two-metre security fence around the property, while employing round-the-clock security.

Her family are also said to use a helicopter, while Mrs Coates herself drives an Aston Martin DB9 sports car with customised licence plates.

The UK’s richest women revealed

Kirsten Rausing is the UK’s richest woman and has a fortune of £12.1billion.

Her money comes from the packaging firm Tetra Laval and she is the 150th richest person in the world.

She breeds horses in Newmarket and is a member of the Jockey Club and director of the British Bloodstock Agency.

Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken is the second most wealthy woman in the UK, thanks to her stake in beer firm Heineken.

She is worth £10.3billion and lives with Michel de Carvalho, a financier and director of Citigroup, with their children in London.

Mrs Carvalho-Heineken said she had to overcome shyness to become the business leader today, adding: ‘I am a very shy and retiring person. As a child, I was appalling – I wouldn’t look up.’

Marit Hausing only this year reached the third in the richest list, but in sad circumstances.

Her £12.1billion fortune came through inheritance after the death of her husband Hans.

She is the aunt of Kirsten Rausing and both of their money is connected to Tetra Laval.

Kirsty Bertarelli is the fourth richest woman in the UK with her £9.2billion fortune.

She is a former Miss UK and comes from the family that owned world ceramics firm Churchill China.

Mrs Bertarelli is married to Ernesto Bertarelli, an Italian-born Swiss businessman who was the owner of biotech giant Serono until 2007

Bet365 boss Denise Coates is the fifth richest woman in the UK and is worth £7.2billion.

She started working in bookmaking as a teenager when she worked in shops owned by her father, the son of a miner who made his fortune in the sports stadium catering business.

The gambling tycoon, 53, increased her salary by 45 per cent, taking her total earnings since 2016 to £1.3 billion.

Leave a Reply