The billionaire boss of Bet365 pocketed more than £270m last year in another huge payday for the founder of the Stoke-on-Trent-based gambling company.
Denise Coates, who set up Bet365 in a portable building in the Staffordshire city in 2000, received the bumper payout despite the firm making a £60m loss in the year to March 2023.
She was paid a salary of £220.6m in the year to 26 March 2023, a £7m increase on her pay the year before, according to the company’s latest accounts.
As the company’s controlling shareholder she is also entitled to at least 50% of the £100m dividend that was also paid for the year.
The £270.6m combined annual salary and dividend payout is significantly more than the total £260m she collected in 2022 and is one of the world’s biggest ever pay awards.
However, it remains less than the record-breaking £471m she collected in 2020. In 2021, she collected £300m.
Since 2016, Coates has taken home more than £1.7bn and she retains her status as one of the world’s best-paid executives.
The group, which had just over 6,000 staff in 2022, now employs 7,200 workers. . The group also made a £105.4m donation to The Denise Coates Foundation, a registered charity.
In its latest financial year, Bet365’s revenues remained flat at £3.4bn while the business recorded a pre-tax loss of £60m, including a £12.4m loss from its ownership of Stoke City football club.
In 2022, Bet365 made a profit of £49.8m.
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Coates built Bet365 into one of the biggest online gambling companies from her father Peter’s Stoke-on-Trent bookmaking business. It has propelled her, her father and her brother, John, into the ranks of the UK’s richest people.
The family rank 16th in the latest Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune estimated at £8.8bn.
