Margaret Taylor: Betting boss Denise Coates is mega-rich, but is that really so bad?

Only in a sign of our binary times, when if you can’t be classed as good you most definitely must be seen as bad, she has been wowing for all the wrong reasons, with her success seemingly proving not just that she is a Bad Billionaire but a Bad Billionaire who makes her money in the bad, bad world of betting.

To some degree this is justified. Bet365, which would be classed as a technology business if it operated in any other sector, has, after all, developed systems that allow punters to place online bets at any time of the day or night, 365 days a year. With the firm making a pre-tax profit of £800m on wagers of £64.5 billion in its last reporting period, that has clearly been great for business - but at what cost to customers? Hard as that cost may be to quantify, the assumption is it has been high, with betting firms, just like alcohol and tobacco companies, widely perceived to thrive on addiction and human weakness.

It may not be a fair assessment, though. There is no doubt that problem gambling ruins lives, with the charity GambleAware finding earlier this year that those addicted to gambling are up to six times more likely than the wider population to have suicidal thoughts. Even after stripping out pre-existing factors such as depression, substance abuse and money worries, the research said that problem gamblers are three times more likely to feel suicidal than everyone else, with the charity Gambling With Lives claiming there could be up to 650 gambling-related suicides in the UK each year.

But with figures from the Gambling Commission suggesting that just over one per cent of UK gamblers can be said to have a problem, is it fair to accuse firms such as Bet365 of making all their money as a result of that problem? Should Ms Coates be seen as unethical for presiding over an operation that feeds the addictions of a tiny proportion of its customers, or could she be viewed as an ethical boss for the steps she has taken to protect those her company may be playing a part in harming?

It is notable that a large section of Bet365’s strategic report is devoted to what it terms “responsible gambling”, with the business creating a range of player protection measures that is says are “designed to alert customers to their betting and gaming patterns”. True, that investment came after regulatory pressure, and the aim of the system is to get at-risk customers to regulate their own behaviour, but the business will terminate its relationship with anyone for whom it feels the risk of harm is too high. The company is also one of the first to seek accreditation from support organisation GamCare, which earlier this year launched a social responsibility quality standard for the gambling industry.

How big a difference that will make is debatable, but it would be moot in any case when it is Ms Coates’s own wealth rather than the way she has accumulated it that people really seem to have a problem with. Driven by the hard left, who view all wealth as a sin, billionaire bashing has become all the rage, with the very fact of a person’s riches, rather than what they do with them, seemingly enough to make their heads be called for. While not so long ago there was room for nuance in public debate, now there is none, and the super-rich - who without exception are painted as the tax-dodging scourge of the poor - have become a casualty of that.

Poor them, eh? But, unfashionable as it may be to say so, not all billionaires are bad - just look at Denise Coates. After starting her business with a handful of employees in 2000, she has grown it into an international operation employing over 4,700 members of staff, many of whom are based in her hometown of Stoke-on-Trent. On average they earned £133,000 in 2018/19, over five times what the average person in Stoke will have taken home. Okay, that could be read as stoking divisions in and of itself, but there’s no denying that the creation of numerous secure, high-paying jobs is ultimately a good thing for a local area.

And while much of the coverage of Bet365’s latest financials has focused on how the success of Ms Coates’s company has enabled her to spend “staggering” amounts of money buying up land to build a Norman Foster-designed “superhome”, too little has been concerned with the way her riches have been bestowed - via her company’s payroll rather than the kind of tax-efficient scheme usually favoured by execs. Just think what the Treasury will be able to do with the £130m it will have deducted from her bumper salary.

Rather than focusing on how much money she rakes in or how much she is forking out on an unimaginably luxurious new home, we should temper our view of Denise Coates by considering how much she contributes too. Because whether it’s creating high-value jobs in her local area, funnelling millions into charities both at home and abroad or making sure she pays her taxes in a way that is fair to everyone, her business practices really aren’t all that sharp.

Sure, we could bow to ideology and have her curtail her earning power, but that would do nothing to help the poorest in society. Only policies that seek to address poverty - not those that try to eradicate wealth - can do that. And while you can take issue with Denise Coates’s firm for operating in the gambling sector, unless and until betting becomes an illegal activity the fight you are picking is an unfair one. She’s really not the villain here.