Denise Coates, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Bet365, received at least £280m in salary and dividends in the year to March 2025, despite a sharp fall in the company’s pre-tax profits.
The Stoke-on-Trent-based gambling group reported turnover of £4bn for the year, up from £3.7bn in the previous 12 months. Pre-tax profits, however, fell to £349m from £627m a year earlier, reflecting a significant rise in costs as the business reshaped its global operations.
Accounts filed on Tuesday show that Coates was paid a salary of £104m. As the company’s majority shareholder, she is also entitled to at least half of a £353.6m dividend, taking her total remuneration from the group to a minimum of £280m.
While this represents a substantial increase on the £150m she received last year, it remains well below her record £469m payout in 2021. Over her career, Coates has now extracted more than £2.5bn in pay and dividends from Bet365, which she famously began building from a portable cabin in a car park in Stoke.
The fall in profits was driven largely by a £325m increase in expenses as Bet365 expanded its presence in the US and South America while withdrawing from China, where online betting is illegal. The company incurred £59m in one-off restructuring and reorganisation costs linked to its exit from “certain markets”.
Bet365 has long faced scrutiny over its activities in China, although it has always insisted it complied with local laws. The company did not fully cease taking bets from Chinese customers until the end of March, meaning further costs associated with the withdrawal may fall into the current financial year.
Despite criticism over the scale of Coates’s pay, industry figures often note that she does not use complex structures to minimise tax and is among the UK’s largest individual taxpayers. During the year, Bet365 also donated £130m to the Denise Coates Foundation, which supports a range of charitable causes.
During the year, Bet365 also waived loans to Stoke City, which was demerged from the group and is now controlled by Coates’s brother, John.
The accounts make no reference to earlier reports of exploratory talks over a potential £9bn sale of the business. Instead, they underline Bet365’s strategic focus on regulated markets, particularly the United States, where it now operates licensed betting services in 16 states after entering five new ones during the year.
The US expansion follows the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision to overturn the federal ban on sports betting, triggering a rapid state-by-state liberalisation that has transformed the American gambling market.