Gamble pays off as bet365 boss receives £265m salary
AS A teenager Denise Coates loved chalking up the day’s results while working part-time as a cashier in her father’s smoke-filled betting shop.
The former Staffordshire comprehensive schoolgirl had a flair for numbers and was soon running the family’s modest chain of bookies.
Yesterday, it emerged the businesswoman who started bet365 from a mobile cabin overlooking her father’s original Stoke shop has this year paid herself a record annual salary of £265 million with dividends.
It makes her Britain’s highest paid chief executive and means her family’s net worth exceeds £6billion.
But the 51-year-old mother of five credits her success with spotting how her father’s “pretty rubbish betting shops” could be used to back a hunch that the internet would change the world.
At the turn of the millennium, she bought the domain name bet365.com for £20,000. Now the company that she persuaded her entire family to “gamble everything on” has an annual turnover to March 2018 of £2.9billion, with profits before tax of £582million. Its global operation sees more than 20 million gamblers using it who last year placed more than £52.6 billion in bets.
However, Ms Coates is rarely seen at sporting events.
“I’m not a regular at the races. I’m a regular in the workplace. My family is what’s important to me,” she said, in a rare interview with The Guardian.
Born in September 1967, the eldest of four children, Ms Coates was inspired by her father, Peter, 80, who bought a chain of bookies called Provincial Racing, among other business ventures. It was there she developed a passion for hard work.
She graduated from Sheffield University with a first class degree in econometrics, the statistical branch of economics, before returning to the family business. In 1995, her father made her managing director, leaving him time to amass control of his beloved Stoke City FC where he became chairman.
Convinced online gambling would one day replace traditional shops, she persuaded her brother, John, the joint chief executive, to back her plans. “The internet was there, and she just felt sports betting was the thing,” he said.
London’s venture capitalists were not convinced. Despite meetings with investors she failed to get backing and was forced to put up the family’s shops as collateral towards a huge bank loan.
“We mortgaged the betting shops and put it all online. We were the ultimate gamblers, if you like,” she said.
The business launched in 2001 offering online betting, bingo, casino games and poker.
And with the development of the smartphone, the potential market became even more vast.
By 2005, all the family’s betting shops were sold to Coral and eight years later she and her father were billionaires. Ms Coates and Richard Smith, who she married in 1993, have one child and are believed to have adopted four children from one family.
Their farmhouse in Sandbach, Cheshire, is surprisingly modest, although an Aston Martin with a personalised number plate is a nod to the family’s vast wealth.
In Stoke Ms Coates is nicknamed ‘Patron of the Potteries’ because, with 3,000 staff, bet365 is the biggest private employer in the region and she has also set up a charitable foundation in her name. The family business also bought Stoke City FC after her father sold it. “We’ve always had businesses in Stoke. I would never want to spend large parts of my time abroad,” she said.
But Ms Coates, who was awarded a CBE in 2012 for services to the community, has headquartered most of bet365’s operating companies overseas.
The amount collected by the Treasury fell from £30.4million to £26.8 million. Taxes collected by overseas authorities rose dramatically, from £37.4 million to £51.4 million.
With bookie advertising and the perils of gambling currently under the spotlight in the UK, bet365, famous for controversial television adverts featuring the disembodied head of actor Ray Winstone, could see new laws affect how it attracts new customers.
‘I’m not a regular at the races, I’m a regular in the workplace. My family is what’s important to me’