UK’s richest woman gets £272m despite Bet365 slump

Bet365 Group founder Denise Coates was paid about £272 million (€308 million) last year, retaining her title as one of the world’s best-paid executives even as her gambling empire’s earnings slumped.

The online bookmaker’s 55-year-old majority shareholder and co-chief executive received roughly £58 million from dividends as well as a £213.4 million salary for her work at the business for the year through March 2022, according to a UK registry filing.

A representative for Ms Coates, the UK’s richest woman, confirmed that she was Bet365’s highest-paid director.

Bet365’s operating profit dropped 95 per cent to £15.4 million for the year due to mounting costs from its global expansion, the filing published on Friday showed. The company has been spending to expand in North America, where in a 2018 ruling the US Supreme Court allowed states to legalise sports betting.

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Still, Coates’s overall compensation was the lowest in the past three financial years. She remains one of the world’s richest business executives after receiving more than £1.5 billion in salary and dividends over the past decade, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Founded in the early 2000s in Stoke-on-Trent, Bet365’s business has benefited from the growing popularity of online sports betting. Revenue for the year rose 2 per cent to £2.9 billion, while the firm added more than 500 more staff to take the total above 6,000. This includes employees of Stoke City FC, the football club it owns.

Coates trained as an accountant and took over a small chain of betting shops her father owned on the side. She became managing director of the business at age 22, according to a Staffordshire University release, and expanded the number of shops before deciding to shift the business online. – Bloomberg