Bet365 chairman Peter Coates was also the chairman at Stoke City and in May 2012 bet365 signed a three-year contract with the club to become shirt sponsors. Bet365 sold its betting shop chain in 2005 for £40 million to Coral and paid off its loan to RBS. The business borrowed £15 million from Royal Bank of Scotland 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.
India’s consumer affairs ministry served notices to various television channels and apps for promoting gambling companies and asked them to stop showing ads from bet365 and other betting platforms immediately. In October 2014, The Guardian newspaper reported that the company had been taking bets from Chinese citizens by using obscure domain names in order to avoid government web censorship. Bet365 was also ranked as one of the fastest growing privately owned technology, media and telecoms companies in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 league table. Bet365 ranked third in The Sunday Times Profit Track 100 league table, which ranks private companies in the UK based on profit growth rate.
