The head of online gambling empire Bet365 has raked in another bonanza despite a big fall in its its profits last year
Gambling queen Denise Coates has netted another £260million windfall – taking her payouts over the past 15 years to £2.7billion.
The head of Bet365 cemented her position as one of Britain’s highest-paid bosses – and best-paid woman – with the latest boardroom bonanza.
Newly published accounts for her family’s gambling empire show she received a salary alone of £104million, up from £94.7million in 2024.
Bet365 Group also tripled the amount of cash dividends to family shareholders last year, to £313.6million. Ms Coates, 58, was due a hefty chunk of that because of her majority stake in the business.
The roughly £260million windfall, while staggering, is actually less than her record £469million in 2021. It will further swell the fortune of the Coates family, whose wealth was estimated at £9.44billon in the latest Sunday Times Rich List, making them Britain’s 16th richest people.
Ms Coates, who shuns publicity, set up Bet365 in a portable cabin in a Stoke on Trent car park in 2000.
She and husband Richard Smith lived for years in a farmhouse near Stoke. But the couple hired Lord Norman Foster’s architectural practice to design a futuristic steel and glass mansion in rural Cheshire.
Set in 52 acres, the £90million estate is said to include a sunken tennis court, stables, ornamental gardens, workers’ cottages and a boathouse. Work started in 2019 and carried on for four years.
She is said to have spent £8.5million buying surrounding land to ensure the property was not overlooked. Ms Coates once said in a rare interview: “I was convinced early on that gambling would work well on the internet. It is private, accessible and allows you to present a huge range of betting opportunities to customers.”
The Coates family are also one of Britain’s biggest taxpayers. The latest accounts showed the group’s total tax contribution to the UK Exchequer was £481.5millon, after £364milion in 2024.
The group said it also made “significant charitable donations to the Denise Coates Foundation”, with another £130million handed over last year.
Separately published accounts for the Foundation, which is described as a company but with trustees, showed it made 27 donations and grants to 22 institutions last year.
A total of £16.7million was handed out or committed, it said. Among the recipients was The University Hospitals of North Midlands Charity, which raises charitable funds for the Royal Stoke University Hospital, County Hospital and Staffordshire Children’s Hospital at Royal Stoke, and which received two grants of £3.9million and £2.5million.
The money will fund a range of essential equipment, including a surgical robot for spinal , additional technology to extend its functionality to lung surgery, spinal and trauma surgery equipment, 185 specialist beds and mattresses, and 77 specialist chemotherapy chairs for patients.
Stoke City football club was, until July last year, owned by the Coates family through Bet365. It is now under the country of Ms Coates’ brother, John. At the point of its demerger, the club was sitting on a more than £10million loss.
Bet365 saw revenue increased by 9% to just over £4billion in the year to the end of March, but its profit before tax nearly halved to £348.7million.
The accounts don’t factor in the impact of a hike in online gambling taxes announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in last month’s Budget. Labour’s move came after pressure to clamp down on problem gambling and to raise funds to tackle child poverty.
In its account, Bet365 insists it is “committed to delivering a safe environment for its customers and we continue to invest significantly in this area. We work with regulators and industry colleagues, both in the UK and internationally, to deliver best practice in safer gambling.”
