With her company’s annual revenue up by “only” nine percent to £3.7 billion (US$4.64bn), bet365 boss Denise Coates has taken a massive pay cut.
Most of us would be miffed to start the new year on the back foot but for Coates, still the richest woman in Britain and world iGaming, it means that instead of the near-£300 million remuneration she received in 2023 (US$377m), her pay packet in bet365’s latest Financial Year, ending March 31, 2024, halved to a mere £150 million (US$188.5m).
According to accounts filed at Companies House yesterday, 57-year-old Coates, who is worth an estimated £7.7 billion (US$9.67bn), took a salary of £95 million (US$119.31m) in FY24 from the pioneering iGaming company she established in 2001 with her brother and joint-Chief Executive, John — down from the £221 million (US$277.63) she received the previous financial year.
Intensely private–and who can blame them in this era of social media churn–, the Coates family have parlayed their father’s relatively modest chain of betting shops in Stoke-on-Trent in England’s post-industrial Midlands into a gambling powerhouse that leads and competes with the best.
Quality Not Quantity
Everything they touch–with the exception of lower-tier Stoke City Football Club–seemingly turns to gold through a confident, calculated business strategy of “quality, not quantity”.
According to the latest bet365 financial filing, Coates, awarded a prestigious CBE in 2012 for her extensive charity work, also received half of the £110 million dividend (US$138.13m) announced by the privately-owned company in 2024.
Nevertheless, despite bet365 reporting a pre-tax profit of £596.3 million (US$748.98m) for FY24–compared to an accounting loss of £72.6 million (US$91.18m)–, some analysts have called the results “disappointing”.
The company decided to quit the hazy India market because of swingeing tax hikes, competition in North America against heavy-weights DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment’s FanDuel–despite bet365’s expansion in Arizona, Indiana and Pennsylvania–has been tough and, overall, iGaming revenue has flatlined — although sports betting, powered by 11 percent growth, continues to prosper.
Disappointing
Commenting on the bet365 results, global sports and entertainment analysts Regulus Partners said: “Bet365 still has enviable scale, resources, and betting brand strength. [But] the group keeps managing to grow at single digits in a double-digit growth environment.”
“Global inflation was around four percent during the period and most online gambling markets managed solid double-digit growth.
“[In our view] it is hard to call these topline results anything more than disappointing.”
£150 million? Disappointing?
I and Denise Coates will take that.
