Rugby League chiefs in England have demanded a £100m support package from the next Prime Minister, insisting the investment can transform the game and level the playing field in northern communities.
The Rugby Football League (RFL) on Tuesday wrote to party leaders to call on them to invest in the game.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey were all recipients of the letter and cites how £10m of government funding was turned into £27m for clubs in the last few years.
Tony Sutton, the Chief Executive of the RFL, said: “We saw in hosting the last Rugby League World Cup that our sport has a unique ability to deliver positive social impact in hard to reach parts of the country, especially across the north of England.
“A key part of the success of staging that World Cup was the CreatedBy facilities programme, under which we converted £10m of Government support to well over £25m of investment into our clubs and foundations.
“But there is still much more to do – and Rugby League now has more to offer than ever, as the result of the transformation in inclusivity over the last decade which has seen rapid growth in Women’s and Girls’ Rugby League as well as our Wheelchair, Learning Disability and Physical Disability competitions.
“46 per cent of our participants are from the top 30 per cent most deprived communities whilst 59 of the 81 constituencies identified in our Facilities Strategy are in the North of England – a region which has historically received less investment than in other parts of the country.”
