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The founder of the highly profitable online bookmaking empire is arguably Britain's most successful self-made businesswoman The most visible face of online bookmaker Bet365, at least to Premiership football fans, is the actor Ray Winstone, who appears on half-time adverts during televised matches with updates on up-to-the-second odds - for example on whether Wayne Rooney will be the next goal scorer. But behind this most male of messengers is a passionate businesswoman, one of Britain's most talented entrepreneurs of her generation.T There is every chance you will never have heard of Denise Coates but with more than £12bn of bets a year staked with her highly profitable Bet365 online bookmaking empire, she is arguably the country's most successful self-made businesswoman. "I really don't enjoy the attention. The public side does not come naturally to me," she explains, giving her first newspaper interview only after much persuasion. "I'm not saying I'm a shrinking violet. I'm not. I've been bossy all my life. It's just I very much enjoy actually running the business." Coates can pass unrecognised through the streets of Stoke-on-Trent, where Bet365's success has made it the city's largest private sector employer, its unassuming offices a hi-tech hive of activity on the margins of an industrial landscape dominated by derelict pottery factories. A gleaming Aston Martin, with personalised number plates bearing her initials in the small car park is the only overt sign of the fortune she has amassed. Certainly, Coates in person is striking in her lack of airs and graces. In 12 years she has built Bet365 into a business with a revenue of £647m, only about a quarter of which comes from punters in the UK. Top-line operating profits of £147m are far greater than equivalent earnings from the online operations of either Ladbrokes or William Hill. And there is a clue to Coates's success in the company name. "You start a 24/7 business and you work 24/7," she explains. "When you're not here [in the office], you take calls in the middle of the night, regularly – that's how the early days were. I've worked harder than you can possibly imagine. In the last couple of years, life has normalised … The impact on my life now is very different." The latest filed accounts show Coates and her family have started to enjoy the fruits of their labour, sharing almost £75m in dividends over three years. Half of this has gone to Bet365's indefatigable founder, by dint of her 50.2% stake, making Coates a very rich woman indeed. Profits too have been used to subsidise Stoke City football club, which is majority owned by Bet365. The Sunday Times' rich list published in April mentioned Coates almost as an adjunct to her father Peter Coates, the chairman of the football club, putting their combined wealth at £800m. In truth, however, while her popular and affable father has a small stake in Bet365, the business is controlled and run by his daughter. "I'm not a social animal … I think there have been false assumptions made about my role," she says without a trace of irritation. "There was a misunderstanding that as dad was the chairman of Stoke, he ran Bet365 – something dad was always clear that he didn't do. However, the media decides, for whatever reasons, that maybe it makes a better story if they say he does." She is similarly unperturbed about what it means to be a woman at the top of the bookmaking industry. "I never gave it a second thought. It didn't cross my mind. I probably had a few [meetings] at first where I had to put somebody right – but I knew my business, so it wasn't a problem … I just wanted to get on with making my business successful. I've never dwelled on the fact, or thought about the fact, that I was a woman." Coates's start in the bookmaking industry was unremarkable. She began as a cashier, marking up results in a small number of betting shops owned by her father, and operated for him as a sideline to his main business which was football stadium catering. Outside the confines of the cashier's booth the bookmaking industry might have seemed to many a very male preserve, but Coates was blind to that and the trade appealed to her mathematical mind. "I really enjoyed it … by the time I left university [where she achieved a first in econometrics] I could run a betting shop." Unclear what to do next, she went on to train as an accountant within the family firm – a useful move, she reflects, though the work was "dry" and she hated it. Given the opportunity by her father to take over what Coates remembers as "a small chain of pretty rubbish betting shops", she jumped at the challenge. Very soon the shops' fortunes had begun to turn around and, with the help of a huge loan from Barclays, Coates acquired a neighbouring chain, doubling the size of the business at a stroke. But turning round the fortunes of the shops – long since sold on to Coral – was not enough. Working from an office above one of her father's bookies, Coates starting to notice the emerging popularity of gambling websites. Quickly, she was convinced this was where the future lay. "She just kept saying: 'This is what we're going to do, this is what we're going to do,'" recalls her brother John Coates, who helps run the business and is her closest adviser. "The internet was there and she just felt sports betting was the thing." Others too, such as Coral and William Hill, were tentatively exploring what the internet had to offer, but none leapt into these uncharted waters with quite the conviction of Coates. Having failed to raise a penny from venture capitalists in London, she turned instead to her father, other family members and Royal Bank of Scotland for the backing she needed. "We mortgaged the betting shops and put it all into online. We knew the industry required big startup costs but … we gambled everything on it. We were the ultimate gamblers if you like." It was a bet that has paid off spectacularly, producing a hi-tech business that employs 1,900 staff in Stoke and spends £60m a year on IT. "Why Stoke? It's a simple answer: it's where I'm from," says Coates. "We began in a Portakabin on a car park near one of the betting shops. It's to a large extent down to an accident of birth … As to why we have stayed here when every other major competitor is based in a lower tax jurisdiction, that's a more difficult question to answer logically." In his March budget, the chancellor confirmed he wanted to remove this uneven tax regime, proposing the introduction of a tax based on the punter's jurisdiction rather than that of the online bookmaker. Bet365 has long pressed for such a move, claiming that about half of the £130m in taxes the group pays to the UK exchequer is made up of duty they might otherwise largely avoid if they relocated offshore. "The area means a lot to us," insists Coates. "We've always worked in Stoke, we've always had businesses in Stoke. I would never what to spend large parts of my time abroad if I can avoid it." While Coates displays a loyalty to her hometown, she is markedly less sentimental when it comes to sport. Unlike many of her bookmaking counterparts, she is rarely to be found at big sporting events holding forth on her opinion of the likely outcome. She retains a resolutely commercial focus. "I'm not a regular at the races. I'm a regular in the workplace." The group's ownership of Stoke City is a project she has almost nothing to do with, leaving it to her father and brother, for whom it is a great passion. Her husband also works at the club, which has received about £60m in Bet365 funds since it was taken over in 2006. While some of her family relish the high-profile challenge of owning a Premiership club, Coates herself is happy to remain almost invisible, left to get on with her job. So protective of her privacy is she that she declines to discuss her interests beyond work. "My family is what's important to me," is the nearest she comes, though she won't say whether she has children. Although she has not won the Veuve Clicquot businesswoman of the year award or enjoyed the celebrity of internet entrepreneur peers such as Martha Lane Fox, Coates's success was finally recognised outside the betting industry last year when she was awarded a CBE. Should Bet365 continue to flourish, it is hard to imagine her remaining below the radar much longer.