Gambling giant Bet365's boss Denise Coates nets new £150m windfall - despite a 45% pay cut
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The boss of gambling giant Bet365 has taken a 45% pay cut - but still raked in £150million last year. Accounts show billionaire Denise Coates, already Britain’s highest-paid woman, further boosted her fortune through a salary and dividend bonanza. It came as Stoke-on-Trent based Bet365’s turnover rose by 9% to hit almost £3.7billion in the year to March last year.
Ms Coates, whose family fortune is estimated at £7.4billion, set up Bet365 from a portable cabin in a car park in Stoke in 2000. She is now listed among the UK’s biggest taxpayers, with her family estimated to have paid £375.9million into the Exchequer in 2023. The 57-year-old, who shuns publicity, is know for her record-breaking pay packets over the years. During her time in charge, she has netted well in excess of £2billion.
Documents posted at Companies House showed she was paid another near £97million in salary, plus was entitled to at least half of the £110million dividend handed out by the company. Yet despite the mind-boggling, it was actually less than the £270million she got the prior year, or the £466million she collected in 2020.
Ms Coates and her husband Richard Smith lived for years in a farmhouse near Stoke-on-Trent. 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.
