bet365 – From portable to prodigious in a decade

bet365 began its life as a single portable (trailer for you US folk) situated in a car park, occupied by a handful of techies in the year 2000.

According to their latest  annual report they now employ over 1,700 staff, having put on almost 400 in the 12 months to March 2011!  I wonder how many portables they have now?

According to founder Denise Coates, “we continue to invest heavily in the business to keep growing. If we are successful in doing this, we will continue to recruit.” 

Since inception the company has invested heavily on developing technology and development capabilities in-house rather than licensing from third parties and Coates says this strategy has been crucial to her business’ success and continued growth.

And growing it certainly is. The other glaring number coming out of the report was £8.54 billion – the value of total customer wagers which was up  58% on the previous year’s £5.4 billion. Quite a staggering increase given the current economic climate. Customer registrations grew by 34% to just under 6 million.

Based in Stoke-on-Trent (in proper offices not a stack of portables) bet365 is one of the areas largest private sector employers and one of the UK’s largest private companies.