Bet365’s Peter and Denise Coates topped the fortunes made from gambling in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, coming in 92nd in the newspaper’s annual rundown of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the UK.
According to the paper, the estimated fortune of the father and daughter owners of the private UK online betting business rose £50m over the past year to £800m, with this fortune also placing co-CEO Denise 10th in the list of the UK’s richest women.
The next highest fortunes from gambling in the UK belonged to Betfred’s Fred and Peter Done with £700m as of April 2012, the same estimated fortune as PartyGaming co-founders Ruth Parasol and Russ DeLeon, who also placed at 112th on the list. Parasol also made it into the top 15 of the UK’s wealthiest females.
Another major beneficiary from PartyGaming’s £5bn 2005 float on the London Stock Exchange, then marketing chief Vikrant Bhargava, appeared in 329th place with £230m, ahead of Victor Chandler, the eponymous founder and owner of BetVictor, 462nd with an estimated £160m, and Betfair co-founders Ed Wray and Andrew Black, who came in at 620 and 682 respectively with estimated fortunes of £123m and £110m.
The combined estimated wealth of the UK’s 1,000 richest, topped by steel magnate Lakshi Mittel with £12.7bn, grew 4.7% last year to £414bn. This total only includes identifiable wealth such as land and property and not cash residing in bank accounts, meaning the true wealth of the nation’s 1,000 richest is probably greater than £414bn.
