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The Coates family, which owns operator bet365, has been listed number 16 on the Sunday Times ‘Rich List,’ with its net worth increasing by £158m ($197m) since last year, to £8.8bn.
The ‘Rich List’ reveals the wealth of the 350 richest people in Britain, in what is its 35th year running the list. The bet365 owners came in at number 16. They are the only people in the top 20 of the list involved in the gambling sector.
Bet365 has been operating since 2000 and was launched in Stoke-on-Trent, England by the Coates family. Bet365 owners Denise, John and her brother Peter have been recorded to be worth £8.8bn, making them number 16 on England’s richest rankings. Denise’s father, John, is the Co-Founder of bet365 and also the Chairman of Stoke City Football Club.
The family’s current worth has increased by £158m since last year’s rankings were released; making them the richest family in the Midlands.
Denise Coates increased bet365’s value by taking over a number of her family’s betting shops and then selling them to Coral in 2005 for £40m. After picking up on the potential success of online gambling businesses, she then bought the bet365.com domain in 2000 and launched the website in 2001.
Coates is now the UK’s highest-paid boss and has been for several years.
The wealth shared by UK billionaires climbed to £683.86bn, £30,734 more than in last year’s Rich List. However, the 2023 list registers the first fall in the number of UK billionaires since the 2007-08 financial crisis. Currently, there are 171 billionaires in the UK but the number has dropped by six since 2022.
