The chief executive officer of Bet365, Denise Coates, received a 65% pay increase in 2020 to cement further her status as the highest-paid boss in the United Kingdom.
Coates saw her compensation package of £277-million in 2019, which already made her the best-paid executive in the country, skyrocket to an even more impressive £421-million last year, representing a mammoth 65% increase over 12 months.
On that salary alone, she effectively earned £48.000 per hour for her role in leading Bet365 in 2020, but that’s not all. As the primary shareholder in the company, she would have also received more than half of the £95-million paid out in dividends to investors and shareholders for the business’s positive performance last year.
In total, her reported earnings since 2016 have climbed to almost £1.3-bilion, and if the current trend continues, that could well be over £2-billion by this time next year. Together with her father Peter and brother John, the Coates family has amassed a fortune of over £7-billion and were ranked 16th in the 2020 Sunday Times rich list.
Even before this enormous windfall, the Coates family were already well documented as the UK’s largest taxpayers, and, on current evidence, that isn’t likely to change any time soon. Additionally, Denise donates millions of pounds every year to charity through the Denise Coates Foundation, such as the generous £10-million donation to the Royal Stoke University Hospital at the start of 2020.
She was one of the first to recognise and understand the potential of gambling on the internet. She allowed Bet365 to pioneer what has become one of the most popular game-day betting activities of in-play bets on football. She has taken the brand from Stoke to all corners of the globe.
The generous compensation package earned by Denise that has made her Britain’s highest-paid women are due to her role in growing Bet365 from a small operation based out of a temporary building set up in a parking lot in Stoke-on-Trent into the enormous global betting and gambling powerhouse that it is today.
The brand now operates in many countries and territories worldwide, such as Brazil, where they went past the 119-million user mark in January 2021, a jump of 4% from December last year. It also has a strong presence in areas like Australia, where it has been in operation for almost a decade. As stated in the bet365 Australia review, it gained its Northern Territory license in 2012.
While the group has not yet released its financials for the majority of last year, the significant pay rise for Denise Coates suggests they did pretty well, or at least the board were very impressed with her leadership during a difficult time to do business. Something which Coates confirmed in a press statement.
“On behalf of the board, I am pleased to report that the group continued to make considerable progress during the period, particularly in the priority area of safer gambling, where significant investment and developments have been made. The period also saw the initial impact of Covid-19, with sport at all levels halted across the world. I am delighted with how the group responded and adapted to these challenging circumstances,” she said.
The company also indicated that it had donated a sum of around £85-million to the Denise Coates Foundation to support additional causes such as Alzheimer’s Research UK and, presumably, towards safer gambling as well.
While Denise Coates has made good on the family business, she had to work extremely hard to get to where she is today. From working in her father’s betting shops part-time while at school, she earned a first-class degree in econometrics and trained as an accountant. It is no coincidence Bet365 has grown into the company that it has become under her leadership.