Britain's 'best paid woman', Bet365 boss Denise Coates, took home more than £260 million in salary and dividends in the year to March 2024, according to the company accounts.
The accounts, published yesterday, reveal the betting firm's highest-paid director - believed to be Coates - received remuneration of £213 million for the year, but is less than the £250m awarded the previous year.
As the company's majority shareholder, Coates, 55, is entitled to at least half of the £100m dividend for the year.
Coates featured on this year's Sunday Times rich list as being 'thought to have a higher salary than anyone else in the UK' - with her family's fortunes placing them in the top 20.
Her latest earnings mean she is still believed to be Britain's 'best paid woman' despite a drop of around £37 million compared with the year before.
Bet365 boss Denise Coates was paid more than £260 million in salary and dividends in the year to March 2024, according to the company accounts
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
Last year, Coates company accounts revealed that she took a £170m 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, 2024, as the pandemic stalled growth at the gambling giant, but she also received a share of more than 50 per cent of the company's £97.5 million dividend.
It is thought she has reaped more than £1bn in salary and dividend from Bet365 within the last three years.
In the latest financial year, accounts show Bet365's profits have dropped.
It made a profit before tax of £49.8m for the year (after a £26.2m loss from its ownership of Stoke City Football Club), significantly less than the £469m profit reported in the previous year.
Coates, a former University of Sheffield student who graduated with a first class degree, built the company into one of the biggest gambling firms from her father Peter's Stoke-on-Trent bookmaking business.
After buying the domain name bet365 on eBay in 2001 for around £2,000, she began operating a dot betting business from a portable cabin in Stoke.
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.
She is now the majority shareholder in Bet365, a global company which reported d launches in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Netherlands, and in Colorado and Ontario in North America.
Along with her father, Peter, and brother, John, the family are among the UK’s richest people, with a fortune jointly worth £8.6bn in May 2024, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
The betting firm's HQ employs thousands in Stoke, with the company's employee numbers rising to almost 6,100, up from 5,400 the year before.
Mrs Coates and her husband Richard Smith remain fiercely private and refuse to discuss their private lives, or backgrounds.
The pair set up a charitable foundation in 2012 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.
Denise (left) along with her father, Peter (right), and brother, John (left), are among the UK’s richest people, with a fortune jointly worth £8.6bn in May 2024, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
Pictured: April 2024, the properly was well underway and could be seen being built
Farmer Edward Colcough said he would never sell his farm, which has always been in his family
Edward Colclough rebuffed Denise Coates's efforts to snap up his property in Cheshire as it backs onto her planned huge estate
An artist's impression of how the palatial home of Mrs Coates will look once completed
Last year, a farmer revealed how he turned down a 'silly money' deal to buy his land by Coates for her space-age mansion.
Edward Colclough rebuffed efforts by the betting queen to snap up his property in Cheshire as it backs onto her planned huge estate.
But although he said he would not sell, he wished her well as his neighbour and said he was looking forward to getting on with her.
Private Denise had been buying up neighbours' houses and land to expand her space-age home nicknamed 'Tesco Extra' by locals.
Mr Colcough refused to be drawn on whether a formal offer had been made to him.
Last year he told MailOnline: 'This farm has been in my family for years. We're not for sale.'
Bet365 have been contacted for a comment.
