Bought, unwound, rebuilt, then sold to someone else
People search for the two names together because they see them together: two shopfronts on the same parade, sometimes within sight of each other, carrying different colours and belonging to one company. The path to that arrangement took eighteen years and involved a competition regulator twice. It is worth following, and not only out of curiosity — the identity of the company you are actually contracting with determines who a complaint goes to, whose published rules govern a settlement, and which regulator has jurisdiction over the conduct behind it. The trading name above the door is the least stable thing in that chain of relationships, and it is the only part most customers ever see.
The sequence, with dates
Each of these stages is separately documented, and each one changed who owned the shops without changing what was written above them. That gap between ownership and fascia is the point of this page.
Two independent bookmakers
Ladbrokes traces to 1886 and took its present name in 1902. Joe Coral began bookmaking in 1926 and opened his first licensed betting office in 1961, the year the shops became legal. They spent most of the twentieth century as rivals.
The 1998 purchase, undone
Ladbrokes bought Coral and its 891 shops from Bass plc in September 1998 for £363 million. The government ordered the sale reversed after the Monopolies and Mergers Commission found it anti-competitive, and Coral was sold in a management buyout in February 1999 for £390 million, keeping 59 shops in Ireland and Jersey out of the deal.
The 2016 merger, with conditions
Coral passed to Gala in October 2005 for £2.18 billion. Merger talks with Ladbrokes were announced in June 2015, and in July 2016 the Competition and Markets Authority identified 642 local areas where competition would be harmed, requiring 350 to 400 shops to be sold. The merger completed on 2 November 2016.
Sold on again in 2018
GVC Holdings agreed in December 2017 to buy the merged group in a deal potentially worth up to £4 billion, completing in March 2018 with GVC shareholders holding 53.5 per cent. GVC renamed itself Entain in December 2020. The shops kept their own names throughout.
Asked at the counter, and online
Who owns Ladbrokes now?
Entain, the company formerly called GVC Holdings, which acquired the merged Ladbrokes Coral group in a deal completed in March 2018 and adopted the Entain name in December 2020. Entain is headquartered in the Isle of Man and reported employing over 30,000 staff across more than 30 jurisdictions. It also owns other betting and gaming brands, which is why a claim about "Ladbrokes" that comes with a very large financial figure attached is often a group number rather than anything to do with the shops.
Why do Ladbrokes and Coral shops still look like competitors?
Because they were competitors for most of their history and the brands retained value independently of the ownership change. When Gala Coral was acquired in 2016 the shops continued trading under their respective names, and that arrangement persisted through the sale to GVC. From a customer standpoint the practical questions — which terms apply, where a complaint goes, which account a slip belongs to — follow the brand and the product you actually used, not the corporate parent, so it is worth being specific when you raise something.
Has the group been sanctioned by regulators?
There is a documented record. On 31 July 2019 the Gambling Commission announced that Ladbrokes Coral would pay £5.9 million over anti-money-laundering and social responsibility failings between November 2014 and October 2017. In December 2018 the company paid £1 million in compensation to victims of a problem gambler who had stolen from business clients, on condition that they did not report the operator to the regulator. In December 2023 the parent group entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the Crown Prosecution Service — the first of its kind in the UK — over an alleged failure to prevent bribery between July 2011 and December 2017, agreeing to pay £615 million.
Does the brand still sponsor sport?
It has an extensive record of doing so. It became an official betting partner of Liverpool F.C. in 2023 and sponsors horse racing fixtures including the Chester Cup, the Christmas Hurdle at Ascot and the Thirsk Hunt Cup. Earlier arrangements included the Scottish Professional Football League from 2015 to 2020, two English football clubs from 2016 to 2018, the Rugby Football League Challenge Cup from 2015 to 2018, and darts from 2003 to 2014. Sponsorship visibility is not a measure of how a company handles complaints, which is worth separating in your head.
