The bet365 brand is well-known throughout the United Kingdom, as it has been operating there since 2000. It serves as the leading British online gambling company, being founded by Denise Coates, who still remains as the majority shareholder in the company, as well as the joint-chief executive alongside her brother, John. The company started out providing sports betting opportunities to avid bettors, and then expanded into casino gaming once it moved to the online sphere. Innovation is at the heart of what bet365 does, and the company employs more than 5,000 people to deliver a world-class experience.
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An In-Depth Look at bet365
At the turn of the new millennium, the bet365 brand was founded in a portable cabin building in Stoke-on-Trent by Denise Coates. She developed a sports betting platform as well as a trading teams, who worked together to launch the business online in 2001. A total of £15 million was borrowed from the Royal Bank of Scotland against the family’s own betting shop estate, which had itself been started by Peter Coates back in 1974. Denise had run the estate since 1995 as managing director.
The bet365 brand started out with just 12 employees, who worked on the launch of the sports betting site. Three years after this was established, in 2004, the games website was also launched in Curacao. Not wanting to be anywhere but at the forefront of the betting industry, bet365 launched live streaming via its website in 2006, and then two years later, it introduced registered users to its bingo website. bet365 also became the first company to broadcast live odds via television advertisements in 2008, and it was in that year that the company relocated its gaming hub to Gibraltar.
Things went in the direction of mobile gaming for bet365 in 2010, and one year after this, it became the largest private employer in Stoke-on-Trent, with 1,900 staff on the books. It also proceeded with the opening of its office in Sydney and the company’s first mobile app was launched in 2012. The only website was also launched in Australia, Denmark and Spain, before an office was opened in Darwin, Australia.
By 2013, the company had reached over 10 million customers worldwide, and one year later it became active in Italy. Bespoke corporate headquarters were constructed in Stoke-on-Trent in 2015, opening the following year, which is also when its website launched in Cyprus and Bulgaria. Throughout the proceeding years, bet365 became active in Estonia, Sweden and New Jersey, United States.
Today, the brand is highly focused on development, both in terms of the company itself and of the individual. Employees working for bet365 are always engaged in their respective roles and constantly learning alongside the fact-paced workload, and this has led to bet365 creating and releasing high-quality products and services.
Acquisitions by bet365
While some online brands have taken the path of acquiring other companies to expand their reach, bet365 has done the vast majority of work by itself. Additionally, the brand has entered into sponsorship deals with multiple sports teams, including Stoke City football club, the Bulgarian Ludogorets Razgrad and Slavia Sofia teams, and the Ultimate Fighting Championships. There is just a single company that it has acquired over its years of operation, the details of which can be seen below.
- 2006 – Bowmans.com was purchased by bet365 in November. The brand has a history dating back to 1985, with its founder Gary Bowman starting the American Football Pools out of Manchester, England. This became the first legal platform offering phone-in betting to the U.S. bet365 stopped servicing this market roughly at the time of the takeover before migrating all Bowmans accounts to bet365 one year later.
Rather the acquiring other companies, bet365’s main focus has been to enter into partnerships and sponsorship deals with sports clubs. The extended partnership with UFC sees bet365 named as the exclusive “Official Betting Partner” in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
In September of 2021, the company was announced as the official betting partner of the BOXXER boxing promotion alongside Sky Sports boxing. It was also noted as the company’s official odds partner, meaning that it has been integrated across all digital content of the brand.
The online slot and iGaming division is also undergoing quite the expansion, thanks to a content and promotion partnership launched with Pragmatic Play.
bet365 has also involved itself in the burgeoning U.S. sports betting scene after the PASPA law was overturned in 2018. A partnership was formed with the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Later on, in 2021, it announced that it was intending to launch in Colorado via a deal formed with Century Casinos.
It has also launched in two regulated markets in Argentina – Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires and Provincia de Buenos Aires. As of April 2022, the company is also active in Ontario after being approved by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of the province for sports betting options.
Any Fines or Sanctions?
Like various other gambling brands, bet365 has also suffered at the hands of fines and other warnings throughout its years of operation. Take a look at some of the more prominent ones below:
- 2016 – An offer to provide punters with A$200 of free bets led to bet365 being fined A$2.75 million for misleading and deceptive conduct. The fine was the highest ever levied against an online wagering company by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
- 2021 – Local bet365 operator Hillside Sports was fined SEK 1,000,000 by the Swedish Gambling Authority due to breaking Swedish law. It did this by offering bets on a football match in which the majority of players were under the age of 18.
- 2022 – bet365 was reprimanded by the Danish Gambling Authority, Spillemyndigheden, for anti-money laundering failures when a young player was able to deposit DKK 190,000 into his account over a 1-year period, without the operator correctly determining the source of funds.
Financial Statistics
bet365 has been around and growing for over 20 years now, and this has led to it being known as one of the largest gambling brands in the world. Without a doubt, this has had a strong impact on its financial status. Take a look at some of the company’s financial information below:
- Revenue of £2.81 billion reported in the full year ending March 2021, marking a slight 0.2% rise on the 2019-2020 results.
- Sports and gaming account for grand majority of revenue, totalling £2.77 billion.
- Total wagers on sports were down by 13%, marking the second consecutive year of declining stakes on such.
- The football club and facilities revenue from the Bet 365-owned Stoke City FC, equated to £29.3 million.
- A dividend of £97.5 million was paid out to shareholders by the business for the year.
- The number of active customers at bet365 rose by 13%, offsetting the smaller 4% rise in the previous year.
Office Locations for bet365
bet365 maintains its primary headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent, with these being purpose-built for the company in 2015. Yet it also possesses offices in various other countries, including the following:
- Manchester, UK
- Sofia, Bulgaria
- Sydney, Australia
- Gibraltar
- New Jersey, USA
- Sliema, Malta
- Darwin, Australia
