Denise Coates, the billionaire boss of Bet365, a self-described “ultimate gambler” and Britain’s highest-paid girl, took dwelling at the least £280m in pay and dividends in 2025 regardless of a hunch in pre-tax income.
Coates’s Stoke-based playing empire recorded turnover of £4bn within the 12 months to March 2025, up from £3.7bn the year before. Pre-tax income fell to £349m from £627m within the earlier 12 months.
Bet365 incurred a £325m enhance in bills because it reshaped its world footprint, increasing its presence within the US and South America, whereas giving up its generally controversial presence in China, the place on-line betting is unlawful.
Coates had already extracted greater than £2.5bn in pay and dividends from an organization that she started constructing in a parking lot in her dwelling metropolis.
Accounts posted on Tuesday present that she took an additional £104m in wage, whereas her majority shareholding means she is entitled to at the least 50% of a dividend of £353.6m, taking her complete earnings from the group to at the least £280m.
The deal is a rise on the £150m she claimed final 12 months however falls a way in need of her £469m document payout in 2021.
Whereas Coates’s huge remuneration has generally drawn criticism for its sheer scale, some within the trade have pointed to the truth that she avoids structuring her offers in a approach that dodges tax, making her one of many largest contributors to the exchequer within the UK.
The corporate additionally donated an additional £130m to her charity, the Denise Coates Basis.
The Guardian has previously reported that tax breaks available to Bet365 because of its donations to the muse could have saved the corporate greater than the charity has but paid out to good causes.
In the course of the 12 months, Bet365 additionally waived loans to Stoke Metropolis soccer membership, which was demerged from the group and is now beneath the management of Denise Coates’s brother, John.
The accounts made no point out of early-stage discussions a couple of potential £9bn sale of the group, which the Guardian revealed earlier this year had taken place.
Nonetheless, the corporate did refer obliquely to its resolution to depart the Chinese language market, the place betting is unlawful. Bet365’s presence there has long been controversial, though it has all the time insisted that it was not breaking any Chinese language legal guidelines.
The corporate incurred one-off restructuring and reorganisation prices of £59m after its exit from “sure markets”, it stated.
Nonetheless, it didn’t stop taking bets in China till the top of March, indicating that a few of the price of its exit might fall through the present monetary 12 months.
The departure has been seen by some pundits as a needed step to make sure it doesn’t fall foul of regulators or enforcement our bodies within the US, the place Bet365 is increasing quick.
It entered 5 new states through the 12 months and now affords licensed betting in 16 of them. The US supreme court docket overturned a long-held ban on sports wagering in 2018, sparking a betting growth as particular person states launched their very own regulatory regimes one after the other.
