Despite a 45% pay cut, Bet365 billionaire Denise Coates, the UK's highest-paid woman, received 150 million pounds in salary and dividends last year. This comes as the online gambling company reported a significant increase in profits, the Guardian reported.
Bet365's highest-paid director, believed to be joint-CEO Denise Coates, earned a total compensation of 158.7 million pounds last year, as reported in Companies House documents. This marks a significant decline from her 2023 earnings of 270 million pounds, which included salary and dividends.
In the year ending March 2024, Coates reportedly received a salary of 94.7 million pounds, complemented by an additional 64 million pounds in dividends from her 58% stake in Bet365. Her brother and co-CEO, John Coates, also shared in the 110 million pounds dividend payout, the Fortune reported.
Bet365, encompassing its sports and gaming operations as well as its ownership of Championship football club Stoke City, achieved a pretax profit of 596 million pounds last year, with turnover climbing 9% to 3.7 billion pounds.
Coates, whose family wealth is estimated at nearly 8 billion pounds according to the Sunday Times Rich List, has consistently ranked among Britain's highest-paid executives. She garnered attention in 2020 with a record-breaking 466 million pounds compensation package, driven by the pandemic-fueled boom in revenues, followed by a 300 million pounds payday in 2021.
Britain's richest businesswoman owes much of her success to a bold move in 2000 when she mortgaged her father's betting shops to launch an online business with her brother.
Despite the sharp drop in her earnings last year, Coates' compensation remains far ahead of many global CEOs. For instance, Apple CEO Tim Cook earned $63.2 million in 2023—just a third of Coates' total pay last year.
