Denise Coates, who is worth £7.47 billion, has once again been named one of the richest people in Britain – but her company bet365 is losing tens of millions each year
A billionaire betting boss has once again featured on the list of Britain’s richest people – despite her company losing tens of millions per year.
Denise Coates ranked at number 20 on the 2024 Sunday Times Rich List, with an eye-watering fortune of £7.467 billion to her name. It comes despite the fact that her company, online betting giant bet365, continues to lose huge sums as it spends heavily on new markets across the Atlantic.
The firm recorded a £69.4 million loss in the most recent figures for 2023. bet365’s money has also been ploughed into Stoke City FC, which the Coates family owns, as the club languishes in the Sky Bet Championship. Ms Coates’ fortune is down £1.328bn from last year’s Rich List, when she ranked in 16th place.
This year’s Rich List revealed a significant drop-off in the worth some well-known wealthy Brits, with Richard Branson falling by £2.4bn and Sir Jim Ratcliffe losing £6.1bn after his purchase of a stake in Manchester United. British-Indian businessman Gopi Hinduja and his family topped the list, with their total wealth of £37.2bn being the largest fortune ever recorded in its history.
The Rich List estimates King Charles is worth £610million – putting him in 258th place – and up from £600million in 2023. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and wife Akshata Murty are said to be worth £651million, putting them 245th on the list.
Ms Coates, 56, set up Bet365 from a portable cabin in a car park in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs, in 2000. She is now listed among the UK’s biggest tax payers, she and her family estimated to have paid £460.2million into the Exchequer in 2022. She was awarded a CBE in 2012 for services to the community and business, and has been nicknamed “patron of the Potteries” for her decision to keep the betting company based in Stoke.
Publicity-shy Ms Coates and her husband Richard Smith lived for several years in a farmhouse near Stoke-on-Trent. The couple hired Lord Norman Foster’s architectural practice to design a futuristic steel and glass mansion in rural Cheshire. Set in 52 acres, the £90million estate is said to include a sunken tennis court, stables, ornamental gardens, workers’ cottages and a boathouse.
Ms Coates once said in a rare interview: “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 growth of internet betting has however triggered concerns about the destructive impact on problem gamblers.