Britain’s richest woman and bet365 founder-owner Denise Coates brought in £150 million in salary and dividends in 2024. That was a 45% pay cut compared to 2023. The most interesting thing about Coates’ salary cut though, is that it came at a time of soaring profits for her company.
Bet365 is a leader in the industry, so let’s look at what this decision might tell us about online gambling industry trends in 2025 and if it will have any impact on the other highest paid iGaming executives.
How does Coates’ Salary Compare?
Before we assess how bet365 CEO salary might affect the rest of the igaming industry, let’s take a closer look at igaming salaries in general. Mainly, we were curious whether all igaming executives are paid as highly as Denise Coates, or if she is an anomaly.
We found the answer. Coates’ annual income is a massive anomaly compared to the other biggest salaries in online gambling. Not just that, Coates’ is also one of the highest-paid executives in the United Kingdom.
In 2023, Coates’ earned 13 times the next highest-paid executive in the UK. She earned £221 million, while the CEO of AstraZeneca, Pascal Soriot, earned £16.85 million.
To give you even more context on just how much money Coates earns, the median CEO of the UK’s top 100 companies makes £4.19 million per year.
What does Other iGaming Executives and CEOs Earn?
Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and other executives of massive international companies are the only people on the planet who regularly make more money than Denise Coates does in a year.
But what about other igaming CEOs? What do they make? Well, it depends. Generally speaking, there were not many concrete trends. Sportsbook CEOs seem to be the most well-paid. However, the CEOs of some of the biggest sportsbooks in North America are not as highly paid as CEOs of smaller igaming companies.
For example, Jay Snowden, the CEO of Penn Entertainment (the parent company of ESPN BET and theScore Bet), made a close to US$16 million in 2024. His company brought in US$1.64 billion in 2024. FanDuel and DraftKings both made twice as much revenue as Penn, but their CEOs were both paid less than $2 million in 2024.
Casino software companies also have some of the highest paid igaming executives. Their pay appears to be more proportional to revenues. Here are some of the top paid executives that we could find:
| Executive Member | Company | Annual Salary |
| Barry Cottle | Scientific Games | $18,574,200 |
| Vince Sadusky | IGT | $8,000,000 |
| Martin Carlesund | Evolution Gaming | $7,000,000 |
So, how does iGaming Salaries Compare to Other Industries?
To put things into perspective, check out the table below comparing gambling executives’ earnings with those from other high-paying industries:
| Industry | Salary | Executive |
| Online Gambling | £150-million | Denise Coates (Bet365) |
| Technology | £50-million | Tim Cook (Apple) |
| Finance | £31-million | Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase) |
| Entertainment | £32-million | Bob Iger (Disney) |
iGaming Salary Trends and Closing Thoughts
With a few exceptions –like Jay Snowden at Penn Entertainment– igaming executives are paid less than CEOs in other industries. For example, Rolls-Royce has a similar revenue to FanDuel, but its CEO, Tufan Erginbilgic, makes US$17 million per year.
This doesn’t mean that there are not igaming careers with high pay, just that other industries pay better at the very top. Unless you are Denis Coates, you should not expect to become one of the richest people in the world if you work in igaming.
On the other hand, igaming appears to be more stable than other industries. General economic trends affect igaming, but it is more insulated from the type of things that cause other industries to completely collapse, such as what we saw with the crash of the US car manufacturing industry post 2008.
iGaming isn’t immune to everything we saw after 2008, though. The post-Recession world was full of resentment towards CEOs and high-paid executives. We are in a similar moment right now, and it’s starting to affect igaming executives.
Outcry from people in England and lawmakers has been cited as one of the biggest reasons bet365 slashed Coates’ in 2024 down to £150 million from £221 million in 2023.
We’ve also seen companies like PlayTech, receive similar backlash. Its executives developed a €100m bonus scheme to reward themselves for the sale of its Italian business arm to Flutter Entertainment.
One industry investor called PlayTech’s scheme “the most egregious case of shareholder value expropriation in the history of UK public markets.”
iGaming survived the 2008 backlash against executives. With the market much bigger and more well-known in 2025, it will be interesting to see how much impact backlash has on igaming CEO salaries in the future.
What do you think? Are CEOs making too much money, or do they deserve what they are paid? We’d love to hear from you.
