Bet365

Bet365 Group Limited

Type	Private company
Industry	Online gambling
Founded	2000
Founder(s)	Denise Coates
Headquarters	Stoke-on-Trent, England
Area served	United Kingdom
Services	Online betting & gaming
Revenue	£646 million
Owner(s)	Denise Coates, John Coates, Peter Coates
Employees	2100+
Website	www.Bet365.com

Bet 365 Group Limited, is a United Kingdom based gambling company. Bet365 is one of the world’s leading online gambling groups with over seven million customers in two hundred countries. The Group employs over 2,100 people and is the largest private employer in the city of Stoke-on-Trent.^[1]

Overview

Bet365 is an online gambling company offering sports betting, poker, casino, games, and bingo, as well as video streams on sporting events. Bet365 also offers an on-course bookmaking service.

For sports betting, Bet365 is licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission. Bet365's casino, games and poker operations are licensed and regulated by the Government of Gibraltar. In addition to the company headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent, bet365 have further offices in Gibraltar and Australia. The Australian business is regulated and licensed by the Northern Territory Government, with one hundred staff employed in Darwin. Samuel L. Jackson represents the company in their Australian TV advertising.

Bet365's site is available in seventeen different languages and supports a variety of payment methods including credit/debit cards and Neovia.

Bet365 is a trading name of Hillside (New Media) Ltd.^[2] and operations including payments through the affiliate programme^[3] are carried out under that name.

Chairman Peter Coates also has the same position at Stoke City and in May 2012 Bet365 signed a three-year contract with the club to become shirt sponsors.^[4][5]

History

Bet365 was founded in 2000 in a portakabin^[1] in Stoke-on-Trent by Denise Coates. Denise developed a sports betting platform and trading team to launch the business online in March 2001. The business borrowed £15 million from RBS against the family's betting shop estate which had been started by Peter Coates in 1974 and had been run by Denise Coates as managing director from 1995. Bet365 sold its betting shop chain in 2005 for £40 million to Coral and paid off its loan to RBS.^[6] Bet365 has grown into one of the world’s largest online gambling companies with its reported figures to March 2012 showing amounts wagered on sports at £12.2 billion, revenues of £646 million and an operating profit of £116.5 million, whilst paying £130 million in tax to the UK Government.

Commenting on the published accounts, Stoke-on-Trent Central MP Tristram Hunt said: "This is a great British business success story and we should be hugely proud to have it in the heart of Stoke-on-Trent. This is a company that provides high quality, well-paid jobs for the city, and unlike some other gambling businesses it pays its taxes in the UK."^[7]

Denise Coates, joint chief executive, continues to run Bet365 and is the majority shareholder with 50.1% of the shares. Her brother John, Joint chief executive, runs the business alongside her, with her father Peter holding the position of chairman.

Live betting

Bet365’s In Play product allows customers to bet on events as they are taking place, with a large range of live markets available. Bet365 are continually improving their in Play product, with the most recent update being the implementation of its vFabric private cloud. By using this technology, Bet365 is able to handle thousands of changes per second, and the data latency has decreased to less than two seconds. This development has enabled Bet365 to deliver a continuous stream of real-time information whilst simultaneously receiving and processing large amounts of incoming customer data.^[8]

In addition, Bet365 currently provides a comprehensive live-streaming service for their customers, broadcasting over 20,000 live sporting events each year. Bet365 managed to secure the rights to stream the first ever England football match which was exclusively shown on the Internet, in October 2009.^[9] The match, England v Ukraine, was a World Cup qualifier, and was available for Bet365 customers with a funded account to view for free.

Bet365 affiliates

Bet365 offers an online affiliate programme where webmasters and marketing persons have the ability to earn commissions on the players they refer to Bet365. The online affiliate program allows affiliates to earn commissions as a set percent which is in line with other affiliate programs on online bingo, sports betting, online poker and online casinos.^[10] The terms and conditions in the Bet365 affiliate programme stipulate a negative carry over policy for referral commissions for each channel and a clause regarding brand bidding terms.^[11] However Bet365 were recognised for offering the Best Overall Affiliate Programme, Best Sportsbook Affiliate Programme, Best Overall Affiliate Manager and Best Sportsbook Affiliate Manager at the fifth annual iGaming Affiliate Awards, on 26 January 2012 during the London Affiliates Conference.^[12]

Awards and achievements

At the eGaming Review Operator Awards 2010 organised by eGaming Review magazine, Bet365 won the "Operator of the Year" award.^[13] Bet365 ranked third in The Sunday Times Profit Track 100 league table, which ranks private companies in the UK based on profit growth rate.^[14] In addition, Bet365 was ranked as one of the fastest growing privately owned technology, media and telecoms companies in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 league table.

eGaming Review magazine has ranked Bet365 the number one Internet gaming company in 2010, 2011 and 2012 as part of its annual Power 50 list of the top 50 most influential Internet gaming companies.^[15] Denise Coates, founder and joint CEO of Bet365, received a CBE in the 2012 Queen’s new year honours list for services to the community and business.^[16] In February 2013 Denise Coates was named as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour at BBC Radio 4.^[17]

Controversy

Peter Coates, director of Bet365 and a lifelong supporter of the British Labour party, has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party. One particularly large donation coincided with the relaxation of gambling legislation and the lifting of a ban on television advertising by the Labour government.^[18]

Bet365 is one of the only major online gambling companies to have made the decision to keep their sportsbook based in the UK. Many of Bet365’s competitors have decided to move their operations off shore, to Gibraltar for example, to avoid paying full tax and levy contributions.^[19] Accounts published for the year to March 2012 show the firm paid £20.3 million in corporation tax, while betting duty and VAT took the total tax bill to £130 million.^[7] As reported by Australia’s Today Tonight (Adelaide), Bet365 have refused to pay out $70,000 to a customer, Steve Brunker.^[20] However the programme failed to mention the investigation by Racing Queensland into the integrity of the greyhound race in question. Immediately following the race, a stewards enquiry was called and two dogs were subsequently suspended for 28 days.^[21]

On 17 June 2013, The Northern Territory Racing Commission (which licenses Bet365 in Australia) released the results of their hearing held on the 11 to 13 March 2013. Within the judgement they called into question the integrity of the Ipswich greyhound race.^{[22] [23]} On 26 June 2013, Racing Queensland stewards dropped all charges against Mr Steve Brunker citing "all charges against Mr. Steve Brunker were unable to be substantiated."^[24] Also in Australia, Bet365 have come under intense criticism for closing or severely restricting the accounts of winning clients. It was revealed that the Northern Territory Racing Commission asked a Bet365 representative to appear before the commission to "fully explain its risk management practices" after receiving a "considerable number of complaints .. to the practices of Bet365.^[25]"

References