bet365 is an online gambling company offering sports betting, poker, casino, games, and bingo, as well as video streams on sporting events. bet365 also offers an on-course bookmaking service. For sports betting, bet365 is licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission. bet365's casino, games and poker operations are licensed and regulated by the government of Gibraltar. bet365's site is available in 17 different languages and supports a variety of payment methods including credit/debit cards and Neovia. bet365 is a trading name of Hillside (New Media) Ltd and operations including payments through the affiliate programme are carried out under that name. Chairman Peter Coates also has the same position at Stoke City and in May 2012 bet365 signed a three year contract with the club to become shirt sponsors. bet365 was founded in 2000 in a portakabin in Stoke-on-Trent by Denise Coates. Denise developed a sports betting platform and trading team to launch the business online in March 2001. The business borrowed £15 million from RBS 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. bet365 sold its betting shop chain in 2005 for £40 million to Coral and paid off its loan to RBS. bet365 has grown into one of the world’s largest online gambling companies with its reported figures to March 2012 showing amounts wagered on Sports at £12.2 billion, revenues of £646 million, and an operating profit of £116.5 million. Denise Coates, Joint Chief Executive, continues to run bet365 and is the majority shareholder with 50.1% of the shares. Her brother John, Joint Chief Executive, runs the business alongside her, with her father Peter holding the position of Chairman. bet365’s In Play Product allows customers to bet on events as they are taking place, with a large range of live markets available. bet365 are continually improving their In Play Product, with the most recent update being the implementation of its vFabric private cloud. By using this technology, bet365 is able to handle thousands of changes per second, and the data latency has decreased to less than two seconds. This development has enabled bet365 to deliver a continuous stream of real-time information whilst simultaneously receiving and processing large amounts of incoming customer data. In addition, bet365 currently provides a comprehensive Live Streaming service for their customers, broadcasting over 20,000 live sporting events each year. bet365 managed to secure the rights to stream the first ever England football match which was exclusively shown on the internet, in October 2009The match, England v Ukraine, was a World Cup Qualifier and was available for bet365 customers with a funded account to view for free.
