Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Bet365 boss nets £200m pay in a year
Cash rolls in as punters wager £47bn
ONE of Britain’s most successful businesswomen earned £199.3million last year from Bet365, the online bookies she founded in a Portakabin in 2001.
Denise Coates’s pay packet was more than twice the annual wage bill for Stoke City, her home town team, which is owned by the company.
Accounts for 2016/17 show Bet365’s profits were more than £500million, taking bets worth almost £47billion, up £10billion on the previous year.
Ms Coates, 50, owns just over half the firm and runs it with her brother, John. Their father Peter, chairman of Stoke City football club, owned a small chain of betting shops, which were mortgaged when his daughter came up with the online plan. Ms Coates, a CBE, and her family are at No22 in the Rich List, with a fortune put at £5billion. Top bosses at Bet365 earned £322million between them.
The best-paid female boss among FTSE 100 firms is Alison Cooper of tobacco giant Imperial Brands with an annual package of £5.5million