Revealed: Bet365 tycoon Denise Coates - Britain's richest woman - pockets £271m as she enjoys another bumper pay day from family's gambling business

Britain’s richest woman has pocketed nearly £300million as she enjoys another bumper pay day from the family’s gambling business.

Denise Coates, who is founder and chief executive of Bet365, was handed £271million in pay and dividends last year, according to new company accounts.

The billionaire received a salary of £221million for the year ending March 2023, up from the £213million she made the year before.

As the company’s controlling shareholder, Ms Coates, 56, was also entitled to at least half of the company’s £100million dividend that was also dished for the year. This landed her a windfall of around £50million.

Denise Coates, who is founder and chief executive of Bet365, was handed £271million in pay and dividends last year, according to new company accounts

Ms Coates has run Stoke-on-Trent based Bet365 since it was founded in 2000 alongside her father Peter and regularly tops the list of the UK’s best paid chief executives.

She came under fire in 2020 when it was revealed that she paid herself £469million – one of the biggest salaries in UK history.

Her pay out later dropped to £250million in 2021 and then £213million the following year. But it has meant she has earned around £1.2billion in the past four years – making over £1million for every working day.

And the family, which also owns Stoke City football club, are worth an estimated £8billion.

Her brother John is involved in the Bet365 business and is a major shareholder. But the Coates’s immense wealth and hefty pay cheques have not always proved popular. And some have argued that her latest wage ‘over-values’ the position of chief executives.

Luke Hildyard, executive director of the High Pay Centre, a think tank focused on pay, said: ‘Nobody becomes a multi-billionaire in isolation from wider society. In this case, the wealth depends on money coming out of gamblers’ pockets.’

He added: ‘Pouring hundreds of millions of pounds more on top of billionaire fortunes every year isn’t a good way to maximise living standards and it over-values the contribution that the super-rich have made.’

But the Coates family are some of Britain’s biggest taxpayers having paid an estimated £460million to the Exchequer last year alone.

The billionaire received a salary of £221million for the year ending March 2023, up from the £213million she made the year before

Bet365 is the largest private sector employer in Stoke and employs around 7,000 out of its headquarters, as well as in Gibraltar.

Ms Coates started working in bookmaking as a teenager when she worked in shops owned by her father, the son of a miner who made his fortune in the sports stadium catering business.

The mother of five children, including four girls adopted from the same family, saw that the future of the industry was online and mortgaged the betting shops to build the Bet365 website.

She bought the domain name on eBay and launched the site in 2001, growing rapidly thanks to prolific advertising fronted by actor Ray Winston.

In 2012 Coates was awarded a CBE for services to the community and business.

Nonetheless she has personally preferred to keep a low-profile and said in one of her rare interviews that she did not ‘enjoy the attention’ of the spotlight.

In the latest financial year, Bet365 posted revenues of £3.4billion but notched up a loss of £69million as the gambling empire continues to invest in new markets.

It has licences in Argentina, Australia, Germany, Gibraltar, Ireland, Spain and The Netherlands.

In the year, the group also made a £105million donation to The Denise Coates Foundation, a registered charity.