Coates family slips down The Sunday Times Rich List as estimated fortune falls £1.3bn
Bet365 founders placed 20th in the national newspaper’s annual rundown of Britain’s wealthiest, down four places on last year’s edition
Bet365 owners Denise, John and Peter Coates fell four positions year on year to 20th in The Sunday Times Rich List 2024 with an estimated collective fortune of £7.47bn.
The family, who also own Stoke City Football Club, have seen their wealth shrink by around £1.3bn over the past 12 months from more than £8.79bn in 2023’s roll call of Britain’s 350 richest people and families.
The privately owned online betting giant recorded a loss of around £60m in its most recent financial year despite revenue of £3.4bn, as the cost of bet365’s state-by-state expansion in the US took its toll.
Denise Coates received £220.7m in the year to 26 March 2023, making her Britian’s highest-paid woman, although this was nearly half her £421m pay packet back in 2020.
Independent bookmaker and investor Will Roseff, who holds a 6.7% stake in bet365 after helping Denise Coates to establish the business in 2000 in a portable building in a Stoke-on-Trent car park, slipped from 282nd to joint 304th place following his debut in the list last year.
After the Coates family, the next wealthiest people with ties to the gambling industry, in 28th, are brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone who own a large chunk of live casino and slots supplier Evolution.
The pair, who also hold a property empire including a string of luxury hotels, are thought to be worth almost £6.3bn.
Meanwhile, Mark Scheinberg, who has an estimated personal fortune of £4.68bn, up from £4.33bn last year, took 41st place.
Along with his father, Isai, the Isle of Man-based duo launched PokerStars in 2001 before going on to sell what was at the time the world’s largest poker site to Amaya Gaming for $4.9bn.
Teddy Sagi – founder of Playtech in 1999 – moved up one place to take joint 46th spot with an estimated personal fortune of £4bn.
The father-of-seven sold his remaining stake in the London-listed gambling supplier in 2018 and today part-owns Camden Market and other London properties.
Meanwhile, Betfred founders Fred and Peter Done jumped 17 places this year to 76th as the octogenarian brothers’ wealth rose by around £500m to £2.38bn.
The Times Tax List, published in January, revealed Fred and Peter were the fourth-highest taxpayers in the UK in 2023, one position behind the Coates family in third.
Last month, Betfred absorbed Sharp Gaming and installed the design agency’s boss, Andrew Daniels, as CIO, with Sharp Gaming rebranded to Betfred Technology.
Elsewhere on the Rich List, Michael Tabor and son Ashley Tabor-King were in 212th and thought to be worth £800m.
Racehorse owner Michael Tabor acquired BetVictor for an undisclosed sum in 2014 after having previously held a 45% stake in the Gibraltar-headquartered bookmaker.
Behind Tabor and Tabor-King, Ruth Parasol and family were in joint 214th place with £780m, a fortune unchanged from 2023.
Parasol used the proceeds of a web pornography and sex-line business to launch PartyGaming in 1997 along with three co-founders.
PartyGaming, which floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2005, later merged with bwin to form bwin.party and has been owned by Entain since 2017.
The newspaper said the California-born philanthropist collected at least £620m from the sale of the online casino and poker operator.
Finally, Brighton and Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom saw his personal wealth balloon from £500m last year to £716m this time around, putting him in 233rd spot.
Following a spell with Victor Chandler (now BetVictor) in the 1990s, Bloom created Premier Bet on the eve of the 2002 World Cup before selling the high volume, low margin bookmaker for £1m.
The racehorse owner, poker player and property tycoon went on to create the highly secretive sports analytics business Starlizard and became one of the world’s biggest gamblers.
The Rich List was topped by Gopi Hinduja and family (£37.2bn), followed by Sir Leonard Blavatnik (£29.2bn), the backer of sports streaming service DAZN, which has expanded into sports betting with DAZN Bet.
The combined wealth of all 350 people and families amounted to more than £795bn, although the newspaper noted how this edition recorded the largest fall in the billionaire count – from a peak of 177 in 2022 to 165 this year.