Denise Coates bought the domain Bet365.com in 2000, spent a year building the website, and launched the site in 2001. Today, it is one of the world’s biggest online gambling sites and has netted the 51-year-old a net worth of $3.6 billion. She obtained a loan using the family business as collateral to launch Bet365.com. In a way, she took a gamble that internet based betting would take off. Of course, we now know that it did. She worked her butt off to make Bet365 a success. About those early days, Coates said: Coates is on the Top 100 Richest in Tech list. In 2005, she sold the family business to UK betting behemoth Coral for $51 million. That allowed her to pay off the bank loan she took out to start her firm. Bet365.com generated $3.2 billion in revenue in 2017. The gaming industry in the UK is much different than it is in the U.S. The U.K. gambling market makes up 32% of the global gambling industry. The UK is the largest gambling market in the world – you can literally bet on just about anything there – and generated $17.7 billion during the year ending September 2016. Bet365.com accounts for about $2.8 billion of that $17.7 billion. Coates salary is incredible, but controversial. Gambling addicts cost the UK up to $1.5 billion per year as of 2016. Authorities believe the UK’s gambling industry needs more regulation. That could result in restricting Bet365’s ability to do business and as a result, diminish Coates’ earnings. She formed her charity, The Denise Coates Foundation, in August 2012. Through the foundation she has donated $128 million to 20 causes in the UK and abroad. Coates has also created 3,000 new jobs in an area of the UK that had shed jobs dramatically in recent decades. She was awarded a “Commander of the Order of the British Empire” (CBE) in 2012 for her services to the community and to business. Coates is married with five children, four of whom were adopted from the same family.
