Denise Coates and Her Incredible Success Story
The richest woman in Britain is Denise Coates, the founder and co-CEO of Bet365. Thanks to her shrewd business acumen and dedicated approach, she has achieved extraordinary success and has built up a significant amount of wealth. She’s come a very long way indeed: once a local bookmaker, she’s now an important name in the global iGaming industry.
Early Beginnings
Denise Coates was born on 26 September 1967. Her father, Peter Coates, had experience in the gambling industry. After founding his own catering company, he went on to purchase some betting shops under the name Provincial Racing.
Denise attended the University of Sheffield and left with a first class degree in econometrics. After graduating, she worked for Provincial Racing as an accountant; she had previously worked for her father’s firm as a cashier.
Then in 1995, she became the managing director of Provincial Racing, taking charge of the chain of shops. At the time, it was quite a small chain, though it was still a success.
This paved the way for Denise to purchase another, nearby chain of betting shops. She did this with the help of a bank loan from Barclays. She would spend the next few years continuing to manage the shops.
The Birth of Bet365
Bet365 started in January 2000. Around this time, the internet was still in its infancy, though some people, including Denise Coates, saw great potential in it. She made the life-changing decision to purchase the bet365.com domain name.
She worked with a team of twelve in a portable building at a car park in Stoke-on-Trent to build the Bet365 website. Its aim was to provide people with a convenient way of placing sports bets over the internet.
The website went online and started accepting bets in 2001. To fund its development, Denise borrowed a total of £15 million against the Provincial Racing betting shop estate from the Bank of Scotland.
In 2005, Denise paid back the loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland. She did this by selling the Provincial Racing estate to Coral, a well-established betting brand, in a deal worth £40 million.
With the brick-and-mortar shops sold, Denise could now focus entirely on the growing digital betting market through her Bet365 website. This enabled her to eventually make the site a global success and develop its offerings.
Building an Empire
With Bet365, Denise was on to a winner. Thanks to strategic management, careful decision-making and targeted growth, Bet365 quickly became one of the biggest, most trusted names in online sports betting.
In 2014, Bet365 established a global operating hub in Gibraltar owing to the territory’s more favorable gambling regulations. However, it kept its headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent, with construction starting on a new flagship HQ in 2015.
Bet365’s new Stoke-on-Trent HQ opened its doors in 2016. Despite global expansion, the company is further tied to the city as it owns a majority stake in Stoke City Football Club.
By 2016, Bet365 was one of the largest gambling companies in the world, accepting around $45 billion a year in bets and turning over a profit of over $2 billion.
Denise currently owns around half of Bet365. She continues to work as co-CEO alongside her brother, John Coates, the company’s other co-CEO. Together, they ensure that operations run smoothly and that the company is as successful as possible.
Financial Success
Denise, along with her family, is said to be worth around £7.5 billion. Unlike many other top-earning individuals, she’s earned most of her money as a salary as opposed to dividends.
It’s been estimated that Denise has earned in excess of £2.5 billion from Bet365. Most of this has come in the form of her salary, with her wages topped up by dividends that are a lot smaller in value.
In 2021, she paid herself the sum of £469 million, while in 2024 it went down to £271 million, still a massive sum by any means. Her 2017 salary of £217 million hit mainstream news and attracted quite a lot of criticism.
Someone who spoke negatively about her large salary was Mike Dixon, CEO of Addaction, who said the following:
It cannot be right that the CEO of a betting company is paid 22 times more than the whole industry donates to treatment– Mike Dixon/CEO of Addaction, Gambling charity chief complains about Denise Coates’s salary, Business Insider
Despite criticism, Denise has continued to pay herself huge sums of money as Bet365 goes from one success to another. She was the highest-paid woman in the world in 2018 and from 2019-22 paid more tax than anyone else in Britain.
Philanthropy and Controversy
Her multi-million-pound salary will always be a source of contention for some. Many people believe that someone working in an industry linked to addiction shouldn’t be paying themselves such huge sums of money.
However, people can’t say Denise hasn’t contributed to tackling gambling problems. In August 2012, she set up the Bet365 Foundation, which would undergo a name change to the Denise Coates Foundation in February 2016.
The organisation is registered as a charity under English law and within two years of opening, it had donated a total of £100 million to twenty different charities. These include the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development and Oxfam.
It’s made donations to countries that have been affected by natural disasters and has given financial support to local hospitals as they dealt with the coronavirus pandemic. The foundation has also funded university scholarships and various building projects.
Gambling companies will always attract some criticism, as will people who pay themselves multi-million-pound wages, no matter what industry they work in. The thing is, some would argue that Bet365 has been beneficial for the local community.
The company has employed – and continues to employ – thousands of people not just in the UK, but in several other countries around the world. In 2023, the company added no fewer than 1,475 jobs to its already large workforce.
Like other reputable gambling companies, Bet365 does a lot of good by actively promoting responsible gambling. It also works with charities and organisations to prevent people from developing problems and advise those who need help.
The Future of Bet365 and Denise Coates
Even though Denise Coates net worth has attracted some controversy, the Bet365 brand has been going from strength to strength. In recent years, it’s been working on global expansion and attracting an even bigger base of customers.
Part of what makes Bet365 so successful is that it diversified its offerings early on. While it’s mostly known for sports betting, the site offers a full collection of online casino games along with bingo, poker and fantasy sports.
Thanks to everything the site has to offer, it’s regarded as one of the leading online casinos in the UK. It’s also highly rated as a sportsbook as it continues to provide members with top sports betting opportunities.
It seems almost certain that Bet365 will continue to be a major player in not just sports betting but online gambling as a whole. Unless something serious happens, the brand will likely remain at the top for many years to come.
As for Denise, even though she’s incredibly wealthy she will probably continue to draw a multi-million-pound salary from Bet365 along with dividends, increasing her wealth even further. There’s very little chance she will step down from her role as co-CEO.
Whatever people may think of her, there’s no denying that hers is a story of incredible success. She’s a prime example of how to maximise the potential of the internet and turn a company into a global success.
Denise Coates, Bet365 co-CEO, will generate headlines thanks to her incredibly high salary, but day-to-day, she’s managing a leading international gambling brand and still does a lot for various good causes.
