A betting company boss took a pay cut, but still collected $318 million – making her one of the world's best-paid executives

• Denise Coates, founder of Bet365, took home at least £263 million in the 12 months to March 2022.
• That's lower than the previous 12 months and down from £471 million in 2020.

The woman who founded and runs Bet365 took a pay cut last year – but still remained one of the world's best-paid executives, collecting a total of £263 million (about $318 million) in salary and dividends.

Denise Coates was paid a salary of £213 million in the 12 months to March 2022, according to company accounts released on Friday.

She's also the biggest shareholder in Bet365, giving her at least half the £100 million in dividends paid out for the period.

The haul is less than the £300 million Coates collected for the 2021 financial year, and considerably less than the £471 million she took home in 2020.

Since 2016, Coates earned almost £1.5 billion from Bet365, The Guardian reported, making her one of Britain's richest women — and one of the world's best-paid executives, according to BBC News.

She may even be the best-paid person in the country as last year's Sunday Times Rich List said Coates was "thought to have a higher salary than anyone else in the UK."

The High Pay Center, a think tank that highlights income inequality, described Coates' remuneration as a reminder that "too much money is going to too few people" in Britain.

Labour MP Carolyn Harris, who leads a parliamentary group seeking to examine gambling-related harms, told BBC News that users' losses were "paying for the huge salaries of gambling bosses."

Coates began as a cashier in her father's betting shops in Stoke-on-Trent, England. After graduating from Sheffield University, she helped transform the business into one of the world's biggest online gambling companies.

After correctly predicting that betting would move online, Coates bought the domain Bet365.com for $25,000 in 2000. She borrowed against her father's shops to develop digital gambling platforms.

In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Coates said: "We mortgaged the betting shops and put it all into online ... we were the ultimate gamblers if you like."

Bet365 says it has more than 80 million customers globally. In October, an Insider investigation found 59 "mirror" sites operated by subsidiaries of Bet365 that use obscure web addresses to get around government blocks in China, where betting is illegal.

Bet365 did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.