bet365 Boss Denise Coates Paid $118M, Despite Large Pay Cut 

The CEO and owner of British online gambling giant bet365 was once again one of the highest-paid female executives in the world in 2024. 

Denise Coates paid herself a salary of £94.7 million ($118 million) for last year, according to the company’s recently published accounts. The company also revealed it made £596 million in profit for the year on revenues of £3.7 billion.

Despite her paypacket still being a hefty chunk of change, it’s actually down on the £220 million Coates took in 2023. 

Records show that over the past seven years, Coates has received £1.7 billion in remuneration from the family-run and owned bet365. Coates has been the UK’s highest taxpayer in previous years, as well as owning Stoke City Football Club. 

The Pay cut 

This year’s pay of £94.7 million may seem modest compared to previous years, but still retains her position as the highest- paid exec in the UK by some distance. 2024’s highest salary among executives of the UK’s publicly traded index the FTSE 100 was £18.7 million.

As well as her salary, she received dividends of £63 million, company accounts said. For reference, Apple CEO Tim Cook made around $60 million total for himself in 2023. 

In 2020, Coates paid herself £469 million. That put her among the highest-paid executives in the world for that year, let alone just England and the UK. 

The Coates family has a combined net worth of around £7.5bn. In 2024, the UK’s annual Sunday Times Rich List put the family in 20th place. 

Bet365’s Success

Coates founded Bet365 in the early 2000s in Stoke on Trent, England. It is still based there today, and is still family-owned. 

Coates convinced her father and their family to sell up their modest chain of regional betting shops in the Staffordshire area of England, and to go all-in on online gambling. The business originally ran from temporary trailer offices in a car park in Stoke. 

25 years later, and the investment has clearly paid off. Bet365 now operates in a dozen international markets, including in the growing U.S. online sports betting arena. It regularly brings in £500-million-plus profit years, and employs thousands of people. 

Bet365’s 2024 accounts reported a pre-tax profit of £596 million. The previous year, it had actually reported its first yearly loss in decades, as it spent big on expanding into U.S. sports betting. Revenue was also up 9% at £3.7 billion.