Denise Coates, the UK’s richest woman and founder of the betting network Bet365, earned more than £250 million (R$ 1.6 billion) in the 12 months to March 2022 as chief executive of the company.
Despite her record-setting compensation package being cut for the second consecutive year at the company, she remains one of the highest-paid female executives in the world.
Coates, who is also among the UK’s biggest contributors, received £213m (R$1.35bn) in salary, plus a minimum 50% share of dividends of £100m paid to the group’s four directors. of gambling, taking his total payout to at least £263m (R$1.67bn).
His compensation package is 16 times that of the highest-paid chief executive in the FTSE 100, Sébastien de Montessus of Endeavor Mining. It is surpassed only by ten US executives, including Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk. Musk received about $10 billion in premiums from Tesla options last year, according to Bloomberg.
Coates, 55, who founded Bet365 more than 20 years ago, has received nearly £1 billion from the company over the last three years. Her salary peaked at £421 million in the year before the pandemic, while in 2021 she received £298 million (£1.89 billion). His net worth dropped to just under £5 billion last year, according to Forbes.
The payout came as Bet365’s pre-tax profits fell by around 90% on the previous year to £49m, the lowest level since 2008, as the UK betting group spent heavily on the fight for new customers all over the world.
The company attributed the drop in profits to a £320m increase in “administrative expenses” driven by marketing costs related to launching into new markets and spending on IT infrastructure and technology to grow the business.
Bet365 also hired an additional 649 staff during the period, bringing its total staff base to 6,092. The company recorded a £26.2m loss on ownership of Stoke City Football Club.
Paul Leyland, an analyst at Regulus Partners, said that Bet365 was having to “scramble harder” to acquire new customers due to increased competition in new markets. The company now operates in 18 local markets around the world, having recently launched in the Netherlands, the US state of Colorado and Ontario, Canada.
“During the first stage of the pandemic, customers had more time and more money to bet online, so Bet365 benefited from increased gross margins without much of a cost increase,” said Leyland. But in the most recent financial year, Bet365 “had to increase marketing budgets to attract lower spending users in emerging markets”.
Revenues increased by 2% to £2.87 billion (£18.1 billion) during the period, while the number of active customers increased by 48%. Leyland estimated that average revenue per user was down about 30%.
Bet365 declined to comment.
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