The multibillionaire boss of gambling company Bet365 has collected annual pay and dividends of more than £260m – one of 📈 the world’s biggest-ever pay awards but less than the record-breaking £471m she collected in 2024.
Denise Coates, who set up Bet365 📈 in a portable building in Stoke-on-Trent in 2000, was paid a salary of £213m in the year to March 2024, 📈 according to the company’s latest accounts published on Friday. As the company’s controlling shareholder she is also entitled to at 📈 least 50% of the £100m in dividend paid for the year.
While her £263m pay is huge – and works out 📈 at just over £1m for every working day of the year – it is 12% less than the £300m she 📈 collected in 2024, as the company paid out less profit while spending millions on international expansion plans.
It takes the total 📈 paid to Coates since 2024 to almost £1.5bn.
Her extraordinary pay package regularly ranks among the highest in Britain and will 📈 maintain her status as the world’s best paid woman at a time when many in the UK and across the 📈 globe are struggling to cope with the rising cost of living.
Luke Hildyard, the director of the High Pay Centre, which 📈 campaigns for restraint in excessive executive pay, said it was “hopelessly inefficient for such a huge amount of income to 📈 accrue to one individual” when so many people in Britain were “going through such hardship”.
He added: “A payment this size 📈 is obviously vastly more than necessary to encourage or reward success. Even the best business leaders depend on things beyond 📈 their control like an educated workforce, affluent customers and a stable economy. There really is no moral or economic justification 📈 for such extreme payouts and the inequality and division that they create.”
Coates built Bet365 into one of the biggest online 📈 gambling companies from her father Peter’s Stoke-on-Trent bookmaking business. It has propelled her, her father and her brother, John, into 📈 the ranks of the UK’s richest people, with a combined fortune of £8.6bn according to the Sunday Times Rich List, 📈 which featured her on the cover of the latest edition.
In the latest financial year, Bet365’s profits dropped significantly. It made 📈 a pre-tax profit of £49.8m for the year (after a £26.2m loss from its ownership of Stoke City Football Club). 📈 That was significantly less than the £469m profit reported in the previous year.
Gambling revenues increased by 2% during the year 📈 to £2.85bn. Sports betting revenues fell by 2% but its online games revenues jumped by 25% during the year to 📈 make up the lost ground.
The drop in profits was largely driven by £320m in extra “administration expenses” that included advertising 📈 in new markets and spending on extra computers for expansion. It reported launches in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, the Netherlands, 📈 and in Colorado and Ontario in North America.
Bet365’s staff numbers rose to almost 6,100, up from 5,400 the year before.
The 📈 company did not respond to requests for comment.
skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Business Today Free daily newsletter Get 📈 set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning 📈 Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see 📈 our Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our 📈 Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service 📈 apply. after newsletter promotion
After graduating with a first-class degree in econometrics – the application of statistical methods to economic data 📈 – from the University of Sheffield, Coates expanded the family’s Provincial Racing chain to nearly 50 betting shops.
As the millennium 📈 approached, she decided the future of betting was online and bought the Bet365 domain on eBay forR$25,000 (£19,000), a move 📈 that helped catapult her and her family up the UK wealth league.
Coates was awarded a CBE in 2012 for services 📈 to the community and business, and has become known as the “patron of the Potteries” for her decision to continue 📈 to base Bet365 in Stoke, where it is the largest private sector employer.
“We mortgaged the betting shops and put it 📈 all into online,” she said at the time. “We knew the industry required big startup costs but we gambled everything 📈 on it.”
The revelation of her latest mega payday came just days after research showed the bosses of Britain’s biggest companies 📈 made more money in 2024 by Thursday afternoon than the average UK worker will earn in the entire year.
Paul Nowak, 📈 the general secretary of the TUC, the unions’ umbrella body, called on the government to intervene to “bring back some 📈 fairness on pay” as many lower-paid workers struggle with swingeing real-term cuts to their income.
“Everyone deserves a fair day’s pay 📈 for a fair day’s work. But while working people are told not to ask for more, top pay is soaring,” 📈 he said. “We need government action to bring back some fairness on pay. Workers should have seats on executive pay 📈 committees to bring some common sense to top pay. And ministers must set out plans for fair pay for everyone, 📈 starting by agreeing to pay negotiations in the public sector.”
