Betting boss hits a £421m pay jackpot
THE boss of bookmakers Bet365 scooped nearly half a billion pounds in salary and dividends last year.
Denise Coates, 53, was paid a staggering £48,000 an hour in the year to March 2020.
It takes her total pay since 2016 to over £1.2billion.
Ms Coates, chief executive of the Staffordshire-based online gambling giant, is the daughter of Peter Coates – the chairman of Stoke City FC.
Details available through Companies House show last year she received £421million in salary.
Bet365’s £95million dividend also earned Ms Coates an extra £40million, as she owns around half of the empire. The super-salary is an increase on the £323million she received in 2019.
And the pay packet came as Bet365 reported an 8 per cent fall in revenue to £2.81billion for the year ending March 29, 2020, partly due to the cancellation of sporting events in mid-March.
Ms Coates has been praised for her wealth distribution, pumping millions into good causes such as the Douglas Macmillan Hospice and Alzheimer’s Research UK. Up to 2014 her foundation had donated an impressive £10million to 20 different UK charities.
Last April she donated £10million to University Hospitals of North Midlands to support staff fighting coronavirus.
She said: “I am pleased to report that the group continued to make considerable progress during the period.”
Bet365 was founded in 2000 in a Portakabin in Stoke-on-Trent by Ms Coates as a sports betting platform.
She funded the launch by borrowing £15million against her father’s betting shop estate, which he started in 1974.
Bet365 sold its betting shop chain in 2005 for £40million to Coral and paid off its loan.
In January it was revealed the Coates family handed over £573million in tax in 2020 – considerably more than anyone else in the UK.
Her firm now employs more than 5,000 and in 2012 she was awarded a CBE for services to the community and business.