The gambling industry was built on the sweat and ambition of visionaries, some of whom have presided over decade-old empires, and others who built them from the ground up.

It’s complex machinery where mid-level managers and C-suite executives alike can influence its inner workings without always getting credit. Yet, a few names stand out, luminaries whose contributions have shaped the industry and whose legacies are hard to ignore.

Today, we’re taking a closer look at the most influential people in gambling, and what makes them part of the industry’s Hall of Fame.

Denise Coates

Denise Coates is the scion of the Coates family, one of the most influential women in the gambling industry, who helped her family transform its locally-based chain of shops in Stoke-on-Trent, England, into the online and global gambling juggernaut the company has become today.

Coates is a billionaire today thanks to the fact that Bet365, the company she co-leads as Chief Executive Officer alongside her brother John, is one of the world’s largest and most successful online gambling operators. Bet365 has even driven forays in the sports betting and iGaming market in the United States at a time when arguably more recognizable brand names, such as ESPN Bet, have struggled to make a dent.

Yet, it was not all easy at first. In 2000, Coates, who had graduated from the University of Sheffield and started working at Provincial Racing, the family business, decided to purchase the bet365.com name, which would become one of the world’s strongest brands, while remaining privately controlled by the Coates family.

In 2001, Coates secured a ￡15m loan, putting the physical betting shops on the line as security, and bankrolled bet365.com’s early-day forays into Internet gambling, a medium that Coates understood, even at that young age, that would define the future of business. More than a personal success story of a woman who set out to envision the future and then build it, though, Coates became known for executing one bold commitment after another.

By 2005 she decided to sell all of bet365’s physical shops and moved more aggressively into the online gambling space, which she wagered all her future hopes of success, but far from gambling – Coates was convinced that her bet would pay off.

The rest, as they say, is history. Coates is herself owner of 58% controlling stake in bet365, but the company is rumored to be considering a partial or full sale, before going public, possibly in the United States. Bet365 currently operates in 13 markets in the United States and has funded this expansion out of pocket, making the feat even more impressive.

Her control of the company has also habitually fetched her some eye-watering payouts from the company, and she is arguably the best-paid executive in the gambling industry.

Coates displayed a rare sort of business acumen that is hard to attribute to many people in the industry, even some of its most successful and longest-standing bosses. Bet365 is also largely credited with the introduction of the in-play feature, which revolutionized betting and allowed bettors to place bets in real time.

Amy Howe

Women may not make up as much of the gambling industry’s workforce, but they have assumed leadership positions across some of the world’s largest entities, and not just any leadership positions – the hot seat itself.

Amy Howe is a seasoned corporate insider, who is not a gambling industry native the same way Coates is, but nevertheless – Howe has left her mark all the same. She was first appointed as interim Chief Executive Officer at FanDuel and went on to assume the role permanently in 2021.

Her track record with the company has been impressive, owing of course to its own inner workings and the momentum it had established before Howe’s joining it, but also because of her leadership which saw FanDuel become the first mobile sports betting company to deliver full-year profitability, although the timing of this is debatable, as FanDuel was already experiencing strong momentum in its core markets, and the wave of sports betting regulation further added fuel to this growth.

Based on reports in 2021, FanDuel had achieved 50% of the sports betting market share in the United States, a figure that has been fluctuating ever since, not least because of strong competitive headwinds from mostly DraftKings.

William Hornbuckle

William Hornbuckle is one of the most recognizable names in the gambling industry, and he is currently the Chief Executive Officer at MGM Resorts International, a company he has been with for the past 30 years. He took over the company’s management after the unexpected exit of Jim Murren in 2020.

Hornbuckle’s leadership style has been marked by a person who is aware of innovation and keen to implement it sensibly. In a sense, Hornbuckle reminds you of Denise Coates with her calculated but determined decisions when it comes to steering a company.

Much like Coates, Hornbuckle has only been interested in one company, becoming part of its culture, and understanding its needs and potential. Hornbuckle is largely credited with the digital transformation of the brand and the launch of the BetMGM brand, which has proven itself more resilient than initial predictions.

While BetMGM has not been able to uproot the duopoly of DraftKings and FanDuel, the company has been resiliently expanding its market share and operational reach. While Adam Greenblatt has been busy steering the online brand since 2018, Hornbuckle has focused on expanding the company’s physical footprint.

He has focused on the realization of the MGM Osaka, the first integrated resort in Japan, which has been going forward. Hornbuckle has also been keen to pursue a license for a land-based casino in the United Arab Emirates, after competitor Wynn Resorts secured one in 2024.

Under his stewardship, BetMGM and MGM Resorts International have leaned even more strongly into responsible pla,y which involves employee training, self-exclusion, educational resources, and more, as well as specific campaigns and initiatives, on occasions such as Problem Gambling Awareness Month in the United States.

Jason Robins

Jason Robins, the Co-Founder and CEO of DraftKings, and he is one of the people who have been driving the industry forward, mostly through his business interest in the company he presides over to this very day. Yet, his involvement in the sector, through private interest or otherwise, has helped shape how we experience gambling.

Robins is, or at least used to be, an avid fantasy gambler himself. In 2012, he went on to found DraftKings, the company that will establish tight control over the regulated gambling market in the United States, controlling nearly 40% of the betting and gaming verticals.

He was quick to seize the opportunity presented by the overturning of the PASPA in 2018, launching DraftKings’ fully regulated sportsbook in New Jersey that very same year. Robins prefers to keep a low profile, while still making public appearances when needed to address important talking points for the gambling industry as a whole and advance DraftKings’ interests.

Under his stewardship, DraftKings has thrived, becoming one of two companies to control the sports betting market in the United States almost completely.

Robins will now be leading his company through another challenging period – the rise of sweepstakes social casinos and prediction markets, which have been able to encroach on the territory of traditional gambling companies and divert revenue.

Entering this new period of fresh challenges will be yet another opportunity for Robins to demonstrate the qualities that made him a visionary in the industry in the first place.

Fred Done

Fred Done is an unmistakable character in the gambling industry, and a person whose legacy and influence on the sector is bound to live on. He controls Betfred, the company he founded, and which is currently the largest in the United Kingdom.

His story is one of true rags from riches and has a more nuance past, which evokes pictures of Peaky Blinders episode plot – but nothing so dark. Done left school at the age of 15 and began helping his father run his bookmaking operation, which was illegal at the time.

He would collect bets from different public venues – factories, pubs, and others, but Done knew that the operation would need to be solidified in order to go anywhere and so, in 1967 he opened his first betting shop – legally – joined by his father Pete.

By the 1980s, the Betfred brand was picking up steam with more than 70 shops already open. Fast-forward to 2004, and the company was at peak 1,600 betting shops across the United Kingdom.

Done was not merely a follower of gambling trends – he helped set them. You may have heard of bookmakers paying out early on certain events, and specifically, Betfred adopting the practice. Well, Done is largely credited with this, as certain events need not be over for the bookmaker to process wagers.

Ever a cheerful-person with always something kind to say on and off camera, Fred Done is certainly one of the most influential gambling industry insiders – a true pioneer.

Victor Chandler

Victor Chandler is another gambling industry heavyweight, and the former owner of BetVictor. He is a scion of a gambling family, who inherited the business from his father in 1974, after the passing of his father.

Chandler decided to shed the vestiges of old, and focused on the future, relocating BetVictor to Gibraltar and benefiting from the better taxation and regulatory regime, while still accepting customers from the mainland.

This strategic shift allowed BetVictor to bypass the UK’s 9% betting tax, making it more attractive to bettors and accelerating the rise of online gambling. Chandler's actions are widely seen as a catalyst for the UK government eventually scrapping the tax in 2001 and introducing a new regulatory framework in 2004.

Chandler, though, moved out of the venture in 2014, selling it to a partner, and refocusing his efforts on emerging markets in Africa through other gambling companies.

Teddy Sagi

The gambling industry has not only been influenced by people who founded betting shops. One of the most influential people in gambling is Teddy Sagi.

The founder of Playtech, a company that launched in 1999, and was an early adopter of Internet gambling technology, focusing specifically on developing advanced solutions for the online sector across poker, sports, and casino, Sagi’s contributions to the industry are significant.

He was prescient enough to predict the quick rise of Internet gambling and the need for better products. Playtech went on to list on the London Stock Exchange and achieve a valuation of ￡550m, with Sagi himself staying with the company over the coming years.

Sagi, though, has been a visionary whose ambition has gone beyond gambling, and he gradually divested from Playtech, until he finally exited the company in 2017, having diversified his portfolio with other tech ventures, stock, and real estate.

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