BETTING BOSS HITS £265M PAYDAY JACKPOT
BET365 founder Denise Coates netted a bumper pay rise to £265million last year to cement her place as Britain’s highest-paid boss.
Coates, 51, who started the online gambling firm in a Stoke car park 18 years ago and is part of the family that owns Championship football club Stoke City, picked up £220million pay and claimed half the £90million paid out in dividends.
Her total pay is £48million up on the previous year and is more than double the £98million wages bill of Stoke City, which was relegated from the Premier League in May.
Overall pay for directors – including her brother John and father Peter – and key managers, jumped from just under £322million to £448million.
The huge payouts came as Bet365, which employs more than 4,000 people and has more than 35 million customers worldwide, announced a 28 per cent increase in annual pretax profit to £660million on 25 per cent higher turnover of £2.86billion as it took £52billion in wagers.
The football club made a £21million loss. With the gambling industry coming under increased scrutiny over its impact on society, Coates said: “The group is progressing a range of research projects with external partners on early risk detection and using experience from behavioural science to develop more effective ways of helping customers bet responsibly.
“It is exploring new technologies… to develop more effective ways of identifying harmful play.”
Luke Hildyard, of the High Pay Centre think tank, said: “Obviously, people who build successful companies need to be rewarded for their hard work but this is an obscene amount of money.
“Furthermore, betting companies are not exactly a force for good. Problem gambling is spiralling out of control, with hundreds of thousands of lives affected, including children now addicted.”