Gambling Boss Denise Coates Sets New Pay Record In the UK

Denise Coates might be a familiar name for those enjoying sports betting and gambling in the UK. She is a British billionaire businesswoman, the founder, majority shareholder and joint chief executive of online gambling company Bet365. In October 2019, Forbes magazine estimated that gambling boss Denise Coates’s net worth at $12.2 billion. In 2020, earned a salary of £422 million and dividends of £48 million.

Denise Coates is a headliner in current gambling news in the UK. Based on her total 2020 payout, she set a new record as the best-paid executive in the United Kingdom. Moreover, gambling boss Denise Coates is now one of the highest-earning corporate figures in the world.  Bet365 Sportsbook remained amongst the most successful gambling sites. Their success is due to their effective adaptation to online gambling trends. The company outperformed its counterparts over the course of 2020, so there is much to learn.

The Success of gambling boss Denise Coates

Being the highest-paid director at Bet365 Sportsbook, she earned a salary of £421m in the year ending 29 March. She also earned £48m in dividends, taking her total pay to £469m. Her earning over the last four years took up to £1bn. The company members stated that they find the distribution ,,appropriate and fair”. It is also interesting that gambling boss Denise Coats is also the biggest taxpayer in the UK. The family contributes more than £500m a year when factoring in Bet365’s corporation tax (Source: Guardian).

Coates has become Britain’s best-paid woman while building the Bet365 empire after recognising the power of internet gambling early on and pioneering hugely popular in-play bets on football, which has overtaken horse racing in popularity among gamblers. She took the company from a small operation housed in a portable building in a Stoke car park to a globe-straddling multi-billion-pound empire in the process (Source: Guardian).

Who is the highest-paid woman in the UK?

Ms Coates achieved a first-class degree in econometrics and later trained as an accountant within the family firm, building further on the knowledge of the then small chain that she picked up while working part-time during high school. In January 2000, Coates purchased the domain name Bet365.com. The site was launched in 2001 as an online betting site. The business borrowed £15 million from RBS against the family’s betting shop estate. In 2005, these shops were sold to Coral for £40 million, which allowed Coates to pay off the loan to RBS.

Her contribution: The Denise Coates Foundation

Coates set up the Bet365 Foundation in August 2012, and in February 2016 it was renamed to Denise Coates Foundation. It is a registered charity under English law and it donated £100 million to twenty UK charities as of 2014. The charities include Oxfam, CAFOD, Hospice for cancer sufferers amongst others. They also offer university scholarships and theatre donations. In April 2020, Coates donated £10 million through her foundation to University Hospitals of North Midlands to support staff fighting the pandemic.

Moreover, the company said it had donated £85m to the Denise Coates Foundation, supporting Alzheimer’s Research UK. The foundation’s page on the Charity Commission website offers no indication of whether any money goes to problem gambling treatment but Bet365 said it had made advances in protecting vulnerable people via its early risk detection system.

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