Coates family slip another place in list of top UK taxpayers

The owners of bet365 are now third place, just ahead of Betfred founders Fred and Peter Done.

UK.- Two families that built their fortune in gambling remain close to the top of The Times newspaper’s list of top UK taxpayers. Bet365 founder Denise Coates and her family are at number three on this year’s list, down from number two last year and number one the year before that. Betfred founders Fred and Peter Done were higher on the list this year, in fourth place.

The Coates family, which also owns Stoke City, paid £375.9m in tax in 2023. That’s a drop from £460.2m in the previous year. The Times reports that Coates paid herself £220m last year, while bet365 reported a £61.2m loss, which it attributed to increased costs.

Coates lost her second-place spot to former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone, but only because he was ordered to pay tax and penalties relating to funds in a Singapore trust that he had failed to declare eight years previous.

Meanwhile, the Done brothers paid £204.6m in tax, an increase from £136.8m in 2023. They launched Betfred in 1967 on the back of their father’s illegal bookmaking business.

This year’s list saw no change at the number one spot on the list, which remains occupied by Alex Gerko, the founder of algorithmic trading company XTX Markets. He paid a reported £664.5m in tax in 2023, a rise from £487.4m in 2022.

Last year, the Maritime and Commercial High Court of Denmark ordered bet365 to compensate several Danish athletes after it used their names and images without their permission in its marketing. Hillside must pay a combined DKK4.7m (€631,000) to the athletes in question.