The founder of bet365 Denise Coates has reportedly become the highest-paid chief executive officer in the UK, after receiving a payment of £217 million in 2016. Last year, the reported profit generated by the online gambling operator reached £525 million, while the brand’s customers wagered a record of £47 billion. The amount wagered topped the bets made over the previous year by approximately £10 million.
The payment came as a recognition for the massive growth in the gambling operator’s profits, which were up by 15% and reached £514 million. According to the accounts filed by the operator at Companies House, bet365 gambling revenue over the 2016/2017 fiscal year increased by 39% reaching a record of £2.15 billion.
The information emerged at a time when the concerns of gambling-related harm in constantly increasing, and so is the number of problem gamblers across the country.
The Coates Family Makes a Fortune from bet365
The enormous payment that she received made Ms. Coates the best-paid company boss in the UK, with her shifting the previous holder of the title – Sir Martin Sorrell – from the first place. As revealed by The Guardian, the boss of one of the largest online gambling operators in the country has received a total of £199,305,000 so far this year, as well as dividend payments of £18 million.
The bet365 business, which Cotes started 17 years ago as cashier, has expanded to one of the largest and most influential betting operators in the country. Once started as a sideline to the football stadium catering business of Peter Coates – the father of Denise – the company prospered and became a gambling behemoth not only in the UK, but also on a global scale.
After graduating from the Sheffield University, Denise Coates put her efforts in expanding the family’s Provincial Racing betting chain to approximately 50 outlets. Right before the beginning of the millennium, she was smart enough to understand that the future of gambling operations is to be online, so she acquired the company website’s domain on eBay for the price of £25,000.
Now, almost two decades later, the Coates family is one of the wealthiest families in the UK thanks to the multi-million pound business that Denise started. Even before the bet365’s boss paid herself the massive amount of £217 million in 2016, her family was listed at the 22nd place of the richest ones in the country, holding a fortune of £5 billion.
Up to date, Denise Coates owns a bit over 50% of bet365. Currently, members of her family, including her brother John, her father Peter and her husband Richard, owns a total of 93% of the gambling giant.
As mentioned above, the significant growth registered in the company’s profits comes at a time when local authorities and charitable organisations have been constantly raising a red flag about the increasing number of players who get affected by gambling addiction. According to the Minister at the Department for Culture, Media and Sports Tracey Crouch, about 600,000 citizens suffer from problem gambling behaviour. The country’s gambling regulator, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), on the other hand, has warden that 2 million people in the UK either suffer from gambling addiction or are put at risk of becoming problem gamblers.
- Author
Olivia Cole
