Football is amazingly resilient... we’ll find a way to get through it
82-YEAR-OLD STOKE OWNER’S MESSAGE OF HOPE FOR GAME
PETER COATES laughs out loud at the suggestion he could be told to stay in isolation for a few months.
Stoke City’s 82-year-old owner is a billionaire, but that is not what tickles his funny bone about the prospect of being plunged into solitude while the world tries to tackle coronavirus.
The thought of daughter Denise – the world’s bestpaid woman – sliding pizza slices under his door is not lost on a man born into abject poverty.
Coates admits he has not many answers as to the way forward for football, business or the world in general, but you cannot help but be boosted by his observation that we’ll all get over it.
The youngest of 14 born into poverty in Stoke at the start of World War Two, Coates can recall the days of true austerity.
Not being able to get hold of hand gel or toilet rolls does not faze the man who is also chairman and co-founder of Bet365 – the world’s largest online gambling concern.
The sporting blackout has huge consequences for so many, but he is adamant football will emerge intact.
Coates, above, said: “When you are old like me and you’re about to be told you can’t go out, it’s serious, but we all have a great capacity to survive and I’m sure that’s what’s going to happen.
“It’s going to be a bumpy ride, immensely difficult. The Premier League clubs are OK because of TV income but it’s different for lower league clubs.
“But football is amazingly resilient and clubs have a great capacity to keep going – you feel somehow they’ll find a way.”
Coates has always managed to find a way, often against the odds. He has never forgotten his humble beginnings but insists it never crossed his mind that times were hard.
“We didn’t know anything else,” he said. “It was the norm. We had very little but you never thought too much about it. There were ration books and coupons but you just accepted it. We’d call it austerity today, but these days it’s austerity if you haven’t got a mobile.”
His entrepreneurial spirit has taken him from a row of terraced houses to head-up one of the richest families in the UK.
Daughter Denise, the brains behind the launch of Bet365 from a portakabin back in 2000, earned £320m last year, more than pop queen Taylor Swift and close to the Queen’s total wealth.
Coates snr started it all off with a stadium catering company, so he is well-placed to evaluate the coronavirus picture and implications. He said: “It’s not just football, the pressure on companies around the country and the world is enormous – the hospitality industry, stock markets, they are all being hit badly. We’re in for very difficult times.”