Bet365 boss pockets £280m as millions harmed by gambling

Bet365 founder Denise Coates took home around £280 million in pay and dividends last year, it has been reported.

According to the company’s accounts, Britain’s highest paid woman received a £104 million in pay and is entitled to at least a 50 per cent share in a £353.6 million dividend.

Latest figures from the Gambling Commission show that 2.7 per cent of adults in the UK (around 1.4 million people) experience problem gambling.

‘Collateral damage’

In 2024, Guardian business reporter Rob Davies warned that the gambling harms clinic in Stoke-on-Trent — Bet365’s home — faced a “colossal task” in attempting to deal with the betting industry’s “collateral damage”.

He observed that while Coates donates millions to local causes, the NHS-funded West Midlands Gambling Harms Clinic counts former Bet365 customers among its clients.

Exploring how the entrepreneur became Britain’s wealthiest woman, Davies said that the company had “transformed the British gambling landscape” by making it possible to place bets online “any hour of day or night”.

Bet365 sponsors Stoke City FC, which is owned by Coates’s brother John, and the company is among the biggest employers in the area.

Families torn apart

The Gambling Commission’s 2025 annual survey on gambling harm revealed that almost half of adults in Britain gambled in September.

While it claimed that the increase in problem gambling was “statistically stable”, Will Prochaska, the Director of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads, disagreed.

He stated: “The Gambling Commission releases these statistics as if nothing is wrong. But there’s something very wrong when over a million people have a gambling problem and millions more are being harmed.

“Families up and down the country are being torn apart to deliver profits for big gambling corporations. If we’re serious about addressing this crisis, we must start by banning gambling advertising.”