Losing £500,000 to £600,000 a week is not a viable investment strategy for any business, but that’s exactly what Stoke City FC has been doing since being relegated from the English Premier League in 2018, according to a football finance expert.
The Coates family, the founders of bet365, has essentially absorbed those losses as the primary shareholders in the club via Stoke City Holdings Group and bet365 Group.
The club announced changes to the ownership model last week which will now give bet365 co-CEO John Coates outright ownership and demerge Stoke City Holdings Group from bet365 Group.
John will remain on the club’s board of directors with his father, Peter Coates, and brother-in-law, Richard Smith.
“My family and I remain steadfast in our commitment to Stoke City, so it’s very much business as usual,” Coates said of the structural change.
Stoke City Holdings Limited previously held 98.1% stake in the club and also owned Stoke City (Property) Limited in its entirety. With this new structure, the club confirmed all debts have been cleared and that both bet365 Stadium where matches are held and Clayton Wood training ground are both now owned directly by Stoke City FC.
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Coates affirmed his family’s aspirations for getting the club into a better position on and off the pitch.
“Everything we do is geared towards bringing long-term success to Stoke City and representing our fanbase and local community in a way that makes people proud,” he said.
Infrastructure projects at the stadium and training facility are planned in the coming years, and “Potters’ supporters can rest assured that investment in the playing squad will continue to be maximized.”
Overall, the group thinks this is the most sustainable way for bet365 to continue its global expansion and for Stoke City FC to continue to enjoy the long-term support of the Coates family.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire struck a different tone with this move though.
“It’s bet365 effectively acting like the bank of mum and dad and acknowledging that the money that was owed by the football club, which at one stage was over a quarter of a billion pounds, is never going to be repaid and they are just doing some tidying up,” he told BBC Radio Stoke.
The club could break even playing in the English Premier League, but the financials are a much different story competing in the second tier Championship division where they only finished 17th in the 2023-24 campaign.
The new season starts Aug. 10.
There’s been a strong push from UK lawmakers to curb gambling ads across the sports landscape. A new Code of Conduct governing commercial arrangements between English football clubs and gambling operators will phase out front-of-shirt sponsorships in the Premier League, which does not presently affect bet365 in the lower tier but overall signals a tightening of the belt when it comes to gambling promotion in the coveted sport.
Meanwhile across the pond, bet365 is firmly in third place in the operator pool in the booming Ohio sports betting market, and it also just launched in Pennsylvania.
