The Salford Red Devils’ owner, Marwan Koukash, said a bold plan to base an English team in the NRL is financially viable.

Koukash wants the “British Bulldogs” to compete in an expanded NRL from 2018, playing home games around England and at a halfway house in Dubai.

Koukash, who has put between £3m and £4m of his own money into Salford since saving them from financial ruin two years ago, is prepared to bankroll the plan and has sponsors already lined up.

Koukash tried to buy an Australian club in 2014 but has made little progress and said: “This is a better way of me getting into the NRL. It boils down to whether the NRL want to expand but, if they do, I can’t see why an English team cannot participate.

“The distances involved would be greater but the world is a much smaller place nowadays. It would work, it is financially viable. I have got a major airline willing to back it and I have a hotel group also willing to provide sponsorship – and we haven’t started to market it yet. It is three years in the planning.”

Koukash says one of the motivations behind his plan is to counter the threat from rugby union following Sam Burgess’s code switch to Bath.

“People are worried about losing players to the NRL but the biggest danger to rugby league in this country is rugby union,” he said. “The rugby union are aggressively marketing their product in our heartland, so why can’t we take our game to their place?

“We would have the best rugby league players in the world playing in Gloucester, London and Manchester and I would also like to play one of the games in Dubai. I have already held initial talks about that.”

Koukash, who said the British Bulldogs concept would not have an impact on his involvement with Salford, has run the idea past the NRL, who are toying with the idea of increasing their number of clubs from 16 when their television deal expires at the end of 2017.

Additional teams in New Zealand and Queensland are among the likely bidders for a place in the NRL, alongside Perth and the Central Coast.

Koukash, who said the English team would operate under the NRL salary cap, is set to unveil further ambitious plans for the game when he launches Salford’s 2015 Super League season at the AJ Bell Stadium on Thursday.