london the british government announced a 300 million pound winter survival package on thursday to help spectator sports impacted by the covid19 pandemic but excluding the premier league and cricketthe cash injection is largely made up of loanssupport will be provided to rugby union horse racing womens football and the lower tiers of the national league football the department for digital culture media and sport dcms said in a statementrugby league motorsport tennis netball basketball ice hockey badminton and greyhound racing are also in line to benefitmore than 100 sports bodies wrote to prime minister boris johnson in september to ask for emergency funding warning of a lost generation of activity because of the pandemic and the ban on spectatorsthey called for investment tax incentives and regulatory reform saying covid19 had undermined commercial revenue streams with stadiums and leisure facilities closed or greatly reduced in capacitywe know the vast majority of sports many of which operate on tight financial margins have been making serious cost reductions such as locking down grounds taking up the furlough scheme for many staff and halting excess payments said sports minister nigel huddlestonwhilst the governments overall economic package has provided a significant buffer it is absolutely right that we now intervene to protect entire sports and the communities they support as we navigate this pandemicoliver dowden secretary of state for dcms said britain was a sports powerhouse and this government will do everything we can to help our precious sports and clubs make it through covidthe dcms said preliminary allocations reflected submissions made by individual sports and the funding process would be overseen by an independent decisionmaking board supported by sport england