It’s one of the longest-running partnerships on the planet between a gambling operator and a football club, dating back four decades.
But the link-up between Bet365 and Stoke City is no more, after the betting operator decided to ‘demerge’ from their sponsorship of the club.
However, there won’t be a complete break between the pair – John Coates, the current chairman of Bet365, will take over the running of the Potteries outfit as sole, outright owner.
Feeling Stoked
Peter Coates, the then patriarch of the famous family, first became involved with Stoke City back in the 1980s.
Back then, he ran a number of betting shops and turf accountants, generating enough revenue for him to invest in the football club as a majority shareholder.
Bet365 wasn’t even on the radar in the days before the internet, but when Peter’s daughter Denise became more involved in the business – taking over the running of the Coates betting shop empire in the 1990s, it wasn’t long before she put into place an expansion plan.
That included registering the URL for bet365.com, with the betting shop chain sold off to Coral to pay for the rollout of the online bookmaker – a bold move at the time.
But boy, has it paid off. Now one of the most recognisable names in sports betting worldwide, Bet365 now churns out annual revenues in the region of £2.8 billion, while the net worth of the Coates family is said to be around £8.6 billion – Sue is said to be the highest paid woman on the planet.
All good things come to an end, however, with Bet365 now effectively divesting from the club – John Coates will now become the sole financier of Stoke City.
Stoke City Holdings Ltd, of which Coates is the owner, commands a 98.1% stake in the Championship side. That firm has been demerged from Bet365, and will instead operate as a separate entity.
As part of that transaction, the Coates’ have cleared most of the club’s existing debt and acquired the rights to their Bet365 Stadium home and Clayton Wood training facility.
“My family and I remain steadfast in our commitment to Stoke City, so it’s very much business as usual,” Coates said. “Infrastructure projects at the stadium and our training facility will continue during the coming years at pace, and Potters’ supporters can rest assured that investment in the playing squad will continue to be maximised within our competition rules.”
However, football finance expert Kieran Maguire believes that the poor financial state of the club – who are rumoured to be losing around £500,000 every week – had been impacting Bet365’s own fiscal situation. The Coates family will now personally take on the debt instead.
It’s not known if the deal has anything to do with the voluntary ban on gambling sponsorships in football, which will come into force in time for the 2025/26 season in the Premier League – it’s likely that the EFL will adopt something similar.
During their pre-season friendlies, Stoke have been wearing a new home kit with the Bet365 logo emblazoned on the front, so it’s not thought that the new ownership structure will change the firm’s sponsorship of the club.
Clear and Obvious Error
Meanwhile, over in the United States, Bet365 have been forced to repay almost £400,000 to its customers over a series of ‘odds failings’.
In the UK, bookmakers are protected – somewhat – by the rules of palpable error, where a selection has been clearly priced up at the wrong odds, e.g. a general 5/1 shot made available at 50/1.
However, in America – and specifically in the state of New Jersey – the rules are slightly different.
There, sportsbooks are banned from changing odds after a wager has been struck without the prior approval of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE).
Bet365 argued that a failing in their internal software, as well as a series of manual trading mistakes, combined to price up a number of markets wrong and with clear and obvious error.
The catalogue of failings took place over two years, a DGE investigation revealed, and involved key sporting events – including the NFL’s festive season games in 2020, which are some of the most bet-upon fixtures in America.
Some 199 bets won at the incorrect odds, but rather than settling those punts at the price taken – as they should have, under New Jersey betting law – they instead revised payouts based upon what the odds should have been.
But the DGE concluded that this was unlawful, forcing Bet365 to retrospectively pay out punters at the palpably wrong prices – costing the firm $519,000 (around £409,000).