Seven sports, including swimming and rugby league, "will benefit" from more than £27M ($33.8M) of additional grassroots funding, according to SKY SPORTS. Sport England announced its "latest major portfolio of investments" on Thursday, all of them "designed to get people playing sport regularly." The £27M investment, which "includes specific National Lottery and Government funding for seven governing bodies, will mainly be targeted at people who have a strong affinity with sport, including talented athletes trying to reach the top." Swimming £7.5M ($9.4M) and rugby league £7M ($8.8M) will receive the "biggest boost in finances for participation," with baseball and softball receiving £1.1M ($1.4M) and taekwondo £999,704 ($1.2M). Rugby Football League CEO Nigel Wood said, "We are in a good position to continue to move the sport forward, particularly having also secured significant external investment through our Sky Try campaign, which has committed £2 million ($2.5M) per year until 2021 and which will enable more than 100,000 children to play the sport in the first 18 months of the program." The remaining funding "goes to talent, with rugby league the biggest beneficiary having been handed" another £3.75M ($4.7M). Swimming will receive £3.1M ($3.9M) in talent funding, a further £2.8M ($3.5M) goes to badminton, £410,000 ($512,959) to basketball, £373,800 ($467,668) to weightlifting and £175,000 ($218,950) to baseball and softball (SKY SPORTS, 3/23). The BBC reported more than half of the "latest tranche" will be used to "increase participation, with the rest for talent development." The latest investment follows the £88M ($110M) announced in December for 26 sports to deliver grassroots schemes and the £101M ($126M) in February for 25 sports. There are "plans in place to introduce more females to a sport in which 93% of regular players are male, by creating a Women's Super League." Badminton England's funding will support a program for the next generation of elite players "despite a UK Sport decision to remove all its elite funding before the Tokyo 2020 Olympics." Sport England has now allocated £216M ($270M) "over three waves" for the '17-21 cycle, compared to the £493M given out for the period covering '13-17 (BBC, 3/23).