National team sports given funding for upcoming competitions

Basketball, netball, rugby and rugby league are among a range of sports which will now be able to hold national competitions that were previously under threat. The government has allocated the first tranche of funding from its 265 million dollar sport recovery package which was announced in the budget in May. Five and a half million dollars has been made available to fund the likes of the Mitre 10 Cup rugby competition, the Farah Palmer Cup, basketball's national leagues for men and women, the national ice hockey league and netball's amateur provincial competition. 25 and a half million will go to national sports groups - 5 million of which will help fund the running of the national leagues with the rest aimed at propping up national sports organisations financially. The chief executive of Sport New Zealand Peter Miskimmin told sports editor Stephen Hewson that the funding for the leagues ranges from 70-thousand to 300-thousand dollars each.