What £9bn Coates family fortune means to Stoke City after ownership change
The Coates family have climbed four places in the new Sunday Times rich list
Stoke City owner John Coates has seen his family fortune has risen by nearly £2 billion in the last 12 months to climb four places in the new Sunday Times rich list.
John, his father Peter Coates and sister Denise Coates have a reported combined wealth of £9.445bn thanks to the runaway success of Etruria-based bet365.
The firm created 1,578 new jobs in the last financial year to increase the workforce to 9,145 and made a pre-tax profit of £626.6m, reduced to £596.3m once Stoke’s losses were taken into account. That was on the back of a £72.6m loss in the previous 12 months, as it invested in new markets such as North America. It opened a huge new United States headquarters in Denver, Colorado, in October and, in March, Illinois became the 13th state in its US expansion.
Sunday Times’ experts calculate that the Coates’ wealth has grown by £1.978bn since their last report, 16th in the country and second in the West Midlands behind JCB’s Lord Bamford and family.
This comes amid talk of a potential flotation on the US stock market or even sell – which was one of the possible explanations given by football finance experts when John Coates took sole ownership of Stoke City last summer when bet365 had previously been the club’s parent company.
Kieran Maguire said on the Price of Football podcast at the time: “I don’t see there are going to be (financial fair play) benefits here (in the ownership change) so in terms of the motivations… bet365 are a spectacularly successful organisation, very profitable. Why did they feel the need to sell the stadium? It’s a strange one.
