How Stoke City and Port Vale's owners made their millions | OneFootball

The Potters and the Valiants enjoy a rivalry that is still prevalent to this day

The Potteries Derby has been a rare spectacle in the modern era of football, but rivalry remains strong between Stoke City and Port Vale to this day.

The Potters and the Valiants are cross-city rivals, and Stoke-on-Trent is widely considered the smallest city in England to have two Football League clubs, with origins of the derby thought to be in 1882, when the teams first faced off in the Staffordshire Senior Cup.

The pair have only played in the same league for 22 seasons, since 1919, with the Potters mainly above Vale throughout their respective histories, which has only continued into the modern day.

Stoke's fortunes took a turn for the better at the start of the 21st century, meaning the last time the two teams faced off was in 2002 in the Second Division, the old third-tier.

City's current owner, John Coates, is a part of the family that has overseen Stoke's successes in recent years, and he became outright chairman earlier this year after initially taking co-ownership with his father, Peter, in 2020, who first invested in the club all the way back in 1986.

Carol Shanahan is Port Vale's current owner, after she took over from Norman Smurthwaite in 2019 with her husband, Kevin, and she has been outright chairperson of the Valiants since January 2020.

How Stoke City owner John Coates made his money

The Coates' have long been regarded as some of the richest owners in England in terms of outright wealth, and they displayed those riches by clearing all of the club's debt as part of their ownership change in the summer, despite Stoke's last few years of struggles in the Championship.

According to Forbes, John Coates' net worth currently sits at around $4.2 billion as it stands, which roughly equates to £3.23 billion, meaning he is the 832nd richest person in the world right now, according to their calculations.

John's dad, Peter, initially made his wealth through founding Stadia Catering in the 1960s and local radio station Signal in 1983, while he also started Provincial Racing, a bookmaking firm, which went on to be the start of an empire of betting that has made the family who they are today.

Stoke-on-Trent born Peter became majority shareholder at Stoke and was appointed chairman in September 1986 with the club in the second-tier, and held that position for over 12 years before he resigned from his position in 1998 amid fierce criticism from supporters, but stayed on as a director.

Gambling company bet365 was founded by John and his sister, Denise Coates, in Stoke in 2001, and it quickly became one of the leading betting sites worldwide in the new age of online gambling, and is still one of the biggest of its kind to this day.

Fast-forward to 2006, and Peter took charge of the Potters once again, with the club in sizeable debt and in mid-table obscurity in the Championship, yet they managed to guide Stoke back to the top-flight for the first time since 1985 in 2008.

John had initially trained as a lawyer but was convinced by his sister to co-launch the company, and he can certainly have no regrets, as the pair are still co-CEOs now, with him owning a quarter of the business outright.

He was initially vice-chairman, then the pair became co-owners in 2020, before John was appointed full-time owner of Stoke in the summer of 2024, as the club went through a structural change, and is now looking to lead them back to the Premier League with ex-player Jon Walters as his sporting director.

How Port Vale owner Carol Shanahan made her money

Carol Shanahan's involvement in Port Vale may be a lot more recent than the Coates' with Stoke, but her commitment to the club's improvement on and off the pitch can certainly not be questioned, as they look to climb the leagues to meet the Potters once again.

Shanahan, born in Skegness and raised in West Bromwich, initially left school without any formal qualifications, but at age 17, she became the first female main-frame computer operator at Hoskins Systems in Birmingham.

It was there that she met Kevin Shanahan in 1979, and the pair founded fintech company Synectics Solutions in February 1992, which provides predictive analytics and data services to finance, insurance and government departments in the UK, Canada and the USA.

The company moved their headquarters to Stoke-on-Trent town, Burslem, in 2015, to a large building next to Vale Park, and it was then that the Shanahans first tried to buy the Valiants from then-owner Smurthwaite, after becoming fans of the club and following them up and down the country for years.

The pair also set up hospitality firm Summit Hospitality after finding they had extra rooms in Synectics' new building, and Carol and Kevin were confirmed as Vale's new owners in 2019, buying the club from Smurthwaite for a reported fee of more than £5m.

Carol became sole owner in January 2020 as Kevin stepped down, and Vale have had contrasting fortunes since their takeover, with promotion from League Two in 2022, but then relegation from League One in 2024.