It must be nice to be the boss and get to pay yourself. Billionaire Denise Coates, the head of UK iGaming Bet365, paid herself £323 million (U.S. $428.6 million) last year.
She stands accused of using “backdoor algorithms” to block potential big winners. According to the Daily Mail, a former employee claims the company identifies accounts that threaten its profits and limits the amount of money those players can bet, or even blocks them completely.
The worker said the algorithms would assign a risk rating to customers, making sure that, in the long term, they “can’t win.”
The accusation comes after the revelation that Coates, 52, took home a salary of £277 million along with a 50 percent share of the company’s £92.5 million dividend last year, the largest figure ever for a UK company director. To be fair, Bet365 has grown rapidly since its launch in 2001. Documents revealed sales of almost £3 billion last year, with £85 million given away to charity, an increase from last year’s £75 million. Operating profits were £767 million, with £64 billion worth of bets wagered in the year to March 2019.
Bet365 paid its top directors and managers £428 million, with the highest paid to Coates.
James Poppleton, who worked for Bet365 for 18 months, told ABC News in Australia that the company has a system to make sure it doesn’t lose big money. “Your data tells them how many bets you’ve placed, what sport you’ve put it on, your average bet, your total turnover and your win or loss ratio to the company.”
The algorithm supposedly kicks in after a victory and ensures potential big winners can’t wager any large amounts. Poppleton also said the company identifies successful gamblers and then reduces the stakes they can place or doesn’t offer them odds at all.
Betting companies often limit some customers from gambling, usually targeting professional or highly successful gamblers. But news reports say Bet365 relies on this tactic more frequently. Brian Chappell, founder of campaign group Justice for Punters, said Bet365 “changed everything” went it went online.
“What Bet365 did was a new business model, which was to entice people to join them and then to ban everybody who is any good at all,” Chappell told the Times of London.
Bet365 refuted the charges in a statement.
“Online gambling operators, including Bet365, seek to manage their liabilities by restricting or refusing to accept bets/wagers from certain customers. A bet is a commercial arrangement between two willing parties and there is no statutory right to bet. In the same way that a customer can decide whether or not they wish to place a bet, a gambling business is also free to decide who they accept bets from, and on what terms, to manage their business and financial liabilities, just as an insurance company may do when setting premiums.”
Coates founded the online gambling company in the early 2000s after spotting the potential of internet betting to revolutionize the industry.
She has been credited with turning a modest family business into a global firm raking in millions, being seen as a local girl done good, creating more than 3,000 jobs in her native Stoke-on-Trent when the huge Bet365 headquarters was built.
Coates owns around half of the shares in the company, according to Forbes, which places her 244th in the list of the world’s billionaires, with a net worth of £9.3 billion.
