Bet365 boss receives at least £280m in pay and dividends despite profit slump | Executive pay and bonuses
Bet365’s billionaire boss Denise Coates, a self-described “master gambler” and Britain’s highest-paid woman, earned at least £280 million in wages and dividends in 2025 despite a drop in pre-tax profits.
Coates’ Stoke-based gambling empire recorded a turnover of £4bn in the year to March 2025, compared to £3.7bn last year. Profit before tax fell to £349m from £627m the previous year.
Bet365 has undergone a £325 million increase in spending as it reshapes its global footprint, expanding its presence in the US and South America, while shedding its sometimes controversial presence in China, where online betting is illegal.
Coates had already earned more than £2.5bn in wages and dividends from a company he started setting up in a car park in his hometown.
Accounts released on Tuesday show he received a further £104 million in salary; Its majority stake means it is entitled to at least 50% of the £353.6 million dividend, taking its total income from the group to at least £280 million.
The deal is an increase over the £150 million he requested last year, but falls just short of his record payout of £469 million in 2021.
Although Coates’s high salary has sometimes come under criticism for its size, some in the industry have pointed out that he avoids structuring his deals to avoid tax, making him one of the biggest contributors to the UK exchequer.
The company also donated a further £130 million to the charity Denise Coates Foundation.
The Guardian previously reported that the tax deductions Bet365 received as a result of its donations to the foundation may have saved more than the charity had paid to good causes so far.
During the year Bet365 also waived loans to Stoke City football club, which had left the group and is now under the control of Denise Coates’ brother John.
The accounts made no mention of early-stage discussions about a possible £9bn sale of the group, which the Guardian revealed took place earlier this year.
However, the company indirectly addressed its decision to leave the Chinese market, where betting is illegal. While Bet365’s presence here has long been controversial, it has always insisted that it has not violated any Chinese laws.
It was stated that the company incurred one-off restructuring and restructuring costs of £59 million following its exit from “certain markets”.
But it did not stop taking bets in China until the end of March, indicating that some of the exit cost could fall in the current fiscal year.
The departure was seen by some experts as a necessary step to ensure Bet365 does not fall foul of regulators or enforcement bodies in the United States, where it is expanding rapidly.
It entered five new states during the year and currently offers licensed betting in 16 of them. The US supreme court overturned a long-standing ban on sports betting in 2018, sparking a betting boom as states, one by one, introduced their own regulatory regimes.
