It has emerged that Sport England, which provides funding for grassroots sports in Britain, is offering to provide £500,000 ($810,000/€643,000) per year to support elite level athletes and programmes if the figure is matched from elsewhere.

UK Sport, which distributes National Lottery money to fund elite sport, controversially withdrew all funding for seven Olympic and Paralympic sports earlier this year under its "no compromise" policy.

Weightlifting later received a funding reprieve but basketball, synchronised swimming, water polo, visually impaired football, goalball and wheelchair fencing all had their original cuts maintained.

But it now appears that there may still be hope for some funding to be ploughed back into these sports and it is believed that basketball would be the main beneficiary.

"I am keen to explore what more we can do to support basketball," said Grant.

"I believe that the sport has great potential to reach more young people and grow in this country and we are in early discussions with Sport England and UK Sport about how we can help do that."

Grant recently met former British and NBA star John Amaechi to discuss the situation, while she is set to hold talks later this month with the head of British Basketball, Roger Moreland.

Moreland had called for an urgent meeting with Grant back in June after the British women's team qualified for its third consecutive EuroBasket finals warning that there was no more money available to field the team at the finals in Hungary next year.

Britain's women have qualified for a third consecutive EuroBasket Championship next year ©AFP/Getty Images



But the men's senior team failed to qualify for this year's Basketball World Cup in Spain, as well as next year's EuroBasket tournament.

UK Sport, which invests £125 million ($203 million/€161 million) a year in Olympic sport, took the decision to withdraw the sport's £7 million ($11.5 million/€8.5 million) elite funding because it believed there was no evidence that medals could be won at Rio 2016 or Tokyo 2020.

"We have had discussions with DCMS [the Department for Culture, Media and Sport] and Sport England regarding what more could be done to provide support to sports that we do not currently fund," said UK Sport chairman Rod Carr.

"This includes basketball.

"We do want more sports to be able to reach a performance standard that evidences their future medal potential within eight years."

Sport England already funds basketball grassroots programmes to the tune of £9 million ($14.5 million/€11.5 million) over four years.

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