Bet365 boss Denise Coates nets £260mn payout

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Bet365 boss Denise Coates’ payout from her family’s gambling empire rose by two-thirds last year to more than £260mn, cementing her position as one of the UK’s highest-paid bosses.

Coates was paid a salary of £104mn, according to newly filed accounts for the year to March 30.

The betting company also tripled the amount of cash dividends to family shareholders last year to £313.6mn, up from £110mn in 2024. Coates was due at least half of the dividends because of her majority stake in the business.

As a result, the billionaire gambling tycoon’s total annual payout rose by 65 per cent from £150mn in 2024 to at least £260.8mn. Her total income from the business means she is paid considerably more than Eamonn O’Hare, boss of London-listed telecoms group Zegona, who received £131mn in total in 2024.

Coates has now earned more than £2.7bn from Bet365 in the past 15 years after overseeing its growth to a mobile betting giant. In 2020 Britain’s richest woman received a record total payout of £421mn.

Her most recent pay and dividends were awarded before the chancellor targeted the gambling industry in the Budget last month. Rachel Reeves raised the levy for remote sports betting to 25 per cent and increased taxes on online gaming and casino from 25 per cent to 40 per cent from April.

Bet365 has not disclosed how much the tax increase will cost it but Paddy Power owner Flutter has said it could face a $540mn hit, while Ladbrokes owner Entain and Evoke, which owns its rival William Hill, put the potential bill at £200mn and £135mn respectively.

Coates began Bet365 by taking over her father’s business with her brother more than two decades ago, which she ran from a Portakabin in a car park in Stoke-on-Trent.

She bought the Bet365 web domain from eBay after spotting the potential for online gambling and convinced her father to mortgage his chain of bookmakers to fund the initial investment in internet betting. The business offloaded its entire high street operations in 2005.

The latest accounts show that Bet365 reported pre-tax profits of £338.5mn in the 12 months to March, a 43 per cent decline on the previous year. Revenue rose from £3.69bn to £4.03bn.

The group paid out £353.6mn in dividends for the year to March but £40mn was linked to a distribution relating to a demerger from the group of Stoke City football club, which is now under the control of Coates’ brother John. That left £313.6mn in cash dividends for the shareholders.

Bet365’s accounts made no direct mention of its decision to exit the Chinese market at the end of March. The group does not disclose a geographical breakdown of its operations but analysts had believed China’s “grey market” was a significant source of income for the group and was potentially its second-biggest market after the UK.

The exit from China also fuelled speculation that the Coates family could consider a sale of the business, after media reports that they were exploring a full or partial sale that could value it at £9bn. Bet365 has not commented on the reports.

The family is one of Britain’s highest taxpayers, with Bet365 reporting it had contributed £481.5mn to the Treasury in 2025, including tax on dividends. It made £137.8mn of charitable donations during the year, most of which went to the Denise Coates Foundation, which supports other charities.