Denise Coates: who is the Bet365 boss paid £469m in a single year?

A betting boss has been handed a pay packet of £469m.

Denise Coates, the founder of Bet365, is said to have earned a £421m salary in a 12-month period, along with £48m in dividends – thought to be one of the biggest packages in UK corporate history.

The bumper salary takes her total pay for the last four years over £1bn.

The company has described the payment as “appropriate and fair” despite a fall in revenue.

According to the High Pay Centre Coates took home more than the bosses of every FTSE100 company combined.

In 2019 she took home a basic salary of almost £277m.

Who is Denise Coates?

Denise Coates founded the online gambling company in the early 2000s in Stoke-on-Trent after spotting the potential of internet betting to revolutionise the industry.

In the past couple decades she has transformed the gambling company from a small business operating out of the Staffordshire city to a multi-billion pound gambling giant.

Speaking to the Stoke Sentinel, she said: "I was convinced early on that gambling would work well on the internet. It is private, accessible and allows you to present a huge range of betting opportunities to customers.”

The Coates family net worth is £7.166 billion, and Coates is recognised as one of the richest women in the UK.

A philanthropist, Coates has donated millions through the Denise Coates Foundation. Ms Coates has previously used the Bet365’s annual report to highlight her charity work.

In the year up to the end of March 2019 she donated £85 million from the business’s coffers to the Denise Coates Foundation, up from £75 million the year before.

Ms Coates, Bet365’s joint chief executive, was the country’s largest taxpayer for the second year running, according to the last annual Sunday Times Tax List.

The Coates family also own football club Stoke City. Ms Coates’ father Peter is the Championship club’s chairman.

How much did Bet365 earn in 2020?

The gambling website recorded an 8% decline in revenue to £2.81bn for the business year.

This decline was in part caused by a reduced sporting calendar caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the suspended Euro 2020 tournament.

Bet365’s operating profit tumbled 74% to £194.7m, a fraction of its operating profit for 2019 (£758.3m) partly due to the payouts handed to the companies directors.