England Netball is "struggling to fund the national team" past '19 -- a concern that CEO Joanna Adams said "keeps her awake at night," according to Gwilliam & Currie of the BBC. Sport England awarded the governing body a total of £16.9M in '17, with £3M of that for the national side. Adams said that this funding will "only" keep the full-time athlete program -- launched in '16 -- going until '19, when England hosts a home World Cup. Adams: "It's a huge worry. We've got to boost our commercial revenue. ... No one wants to think that under their control the England team did not survive. And we just won't let that happen." She said that the £3M allocated for the national side "will fund their full-time athletes for two-and-a-half years," after which the sport "must create" its own revenue. Adams said, "We need to have sell-out arenas and we really need to model exactly how male sport commercializes their sport. It's going to be a mixture of ticket income, sponsorship revenue and actually looking at how we deliver netball. Certainly post-2019 it will be a challenge for us as a sport" (BBC, 1/20).
