Stoke City not yachts or private jets is what matters to Peter Coates

Peter Coates is worth £1.2bn but the son of a miner and first world war hero has stayed close to his roots – reflected in how he runs Stoke and his views on how fans should benefit from TV riches

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Peter Coates hardly ever misses a Stoke City game but now and again he likes to take a winter break. This season, the Stoke chairman looked through the fixtures at the back end of January, weighed up the merits of a trip to Spotland on a Monday evening in the FA Cup fourth round or a holiday in Miami, and felt it was time to get away.

Yet it was not quite as straightforward a decision as some might think and come the day of the match, Coates was wandering the streets of Miami trying to find a bar showing what was happening back in Rochdale. “The first one I went in I got nowhere,” he says. “I went in the second one and it was called Linnigans. The guy was at the bar with the remote control and I said: ‘What football have you got on?’ He said: ‘What do you want to watch?’ I said: ‘Rochdale-Stoke.’ So he flicked about, found it and said he would put it on the big screen. So can you imagine, I’m in Miami, ask for Rochdale-Stoke and there it is. There were four of us, it was happy hour as well, so the drinks were half-price. It doesn’t get any better than that, does it?”

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