According to the dailymail.co.uk  the top ten UK gambling moguls are worth at least £100 million each with the family who owns Bet365 topping the list approaching the £1000 million mark –  or in other words, about to become billionaires.  The Sunday Times is set to release their 25th Anniversary “Rich List”  Sunday, April 21st. Of course we will see names like Sir Richard Branson appear and in other categories we will see Sir Paul McCartney and Adele. We are quite interested to see if Mr. Branson’s rise will be even more meteoric after the sale earlier this year of Virgin Games to Gamesys. And it will be quite interesting to see if Gamesys founder, Noel Hayden will be on the Gambling top 10 this year. If so, his net worth will have increased over £30 million with the growth of JackpotJoy, entry into Facebook with the first real money games, his previous deal with Caesars Entertainment,  and the acquisition of Virgin Games among other ventures.

Punters know that you don’t have to win every bet to get and stay ahead, and this can be seen by looking at some of the other names expected to be on this year’s “Rich List” of the UK and Ireland.  Fred Done and Peter Done,  founders of  BetFred, are worth about £850 million and the Manchester United venture has costs them millions.  Russ DeLeon and Ruth Parasol  are worth almost £670 million and paid out  $105m (£71.5m) to the US DOJ to avoid prosecution for offering services to US clients prior to the UIGEA of 2006.   Peter Coates, founder of Bet365 was embroiled in controversy for his sizable donations to the Labour Party over the last 10 years while gambling legislation was still in the process – and the Coates family now tops the list with over £925 million and the Bet365 firm worth about £800 million.   Victor Chandler became the first major player to move his operations offshore (to Antigua) and then Gibraltar and now is worth over £150m.

Stay tuned to the WCD blog as we highlight more of the Gambling Moguls of the world over the coming weeks and months.