Denise Coates, the CEO of Bet365, has taken a £170 million pay cut, according to the company’s filings, after earning nearly £300 million last year.
As the pandemic slowed growth at the gambling behemoth, the betting chief’s remuneration fell from £421 million to £250 million in the financial year ending March 28, 2021, but she still received a portion of the company’s £97.5 million dividend.For the past five years, her compensation and dividends have totaled roughly £1.3 billion.
Ms Coates, one of the wealthiest women in the United Kingdom, started the online gambling company in Stoke-on-Trent in the early 2000s after seeing the potential of internet betting to revolutionise the sector.
Bet365’s sales were essentially flat in the first year of the pandemic, at £2.818 billion, compared to £2.811 billion the previous year, according to Companies House filings. A spike in online gaming demand, according to the company’s executives, helped overcome considerable disruptions in sporting schedules throughout the year.
According to the company,
‘At the start of the period we experience the almost complete cessation of sporting events, however by the end of the first half of the year, we saw the resumption of sports with the vast majority of European football leagues managing to conclude their domestic seasons.’
Meanwhile, operating profit grew by 47% year on year to £285.5 million, owing in part to lower director pay packages, according to the company.
Stoke City football club’s owners, the Coates family, are also Britain’s largest taxpayers. In 2019/20, the company paid the Treasury £615 million, on top of an estimated £220 million tax payment on Mrs Coates’ personal income. She earlier stated that her family was the driving force for her achievement.
According to Coates, their wonderful and dedicated group of staff who have worked with her over the last 12 years in Stoke is another essential to bet365’s success.
Mrs Coates’ charity foundation, which has previously donated to Oxfam and the Douglas Macmillan Hospice, received £85 million from Bet365 in 2019/20.
The Coates, on the other hand, have been chastised for not allocating more funds to gambling addiction therapy. Bet365 donated just £868,000 to GambleAware in 2019/20, a charity that collects donations for treatment and research, but that figure is likely to increase to nearly to £14 million this year.
The disclosures came as fears grew about the pandemic’s influence on Britain’s gambling epidemic, as losses experienced by families trapped at home during the lockdown skyrocketed.
She’s spent her vast fortune on a sprawling country house, offering’silly money’ to neighbours in exchange for their land for the £90 million project.
An artificial lake, buried tennis courts, stables, attractive gardens, workers’ cottages, and a boathouse were all planned for the vast estate nestled in 52 acres of Cheshire parkland.
She also planted 200 trees and installed a two-metre security fence surrounding the property, as well as 24-hour protection. Mrs Coates is claimed to fly in a helicopter with her family, and she drives an Aston Martin DB9 sports car with personalised licence plates.
