Britain's richest woman didn't start out that way. As the Guardian reports, 57-year-old Denise Coates grew up as the daughter of a "moderately successful" businessman, and part of his business included brick-and-mortar betting parlors. In the early 2000s, Coates bet big that the future of gambling lay online. She sold the family betting parlors and founded Bet365. "Perhaps her biggest coup was Bet365's development and perfection of in-play betting, a product that invites (gamblers) to wager in real time on minute-by-minute action," writes Rob Davies. "It is now the most ubiquitous form of online gambling." As a result, Coates is now worth close to $10 billion. The story, however, deals with the flip side of all that—the growing number of gambling addicts wrecked by app features that make it oh-so-easy to chase lost money.
Coates herself hasn't given an interview in more than a decade, and her company is secretive about numbers as it expands beyond Britain to massive markets such as the US and China. "In many ways, Coates is a woman of multiple contradictions," writes Davies. She "is a poster child for corporate excess," but she is also one of Britain's biggest taxpayers—choosing to put most of her vast income through Bet365's payroll rather than hiding it away from tax authorities like many other billionaires." She's also praised as a leading philanthropist as well as a "formidable entrepreneur" who made her fortune in a male-dominated industry—even if it is one fraught with ethical questions. Read the full profile. (Or check out other longform recaps.)
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