The cost of organising the games must be privately funded

Organising committee Locog now has eight top sponsor categories, after creating one for clothing and homeware.

Existing categories were sportswear, airline, automotive, banking, telecoms, utilities, and oil and gas.

It is hoped sponsorship will raise �2bn towards staging the 2012 games, with EDF and Lloyds TSB already signed up.

They have signed up in the utilities and banking and insurance sectors respectively.

'Huge appetite'

Companies will pay at least �40m and an average of �50m to be linked with the 2012 Games.

The top-tier sponsors can activate and start running their Olympic branding campaigns as soon as they sign deals with Locog.

Organisers hope to have nearly all their top-tier sponsors in place before next year's Beijing Games.

Paul Deighton, chief executive of the London 2012 organising committee, said: "The addition of a new category demonstrates that there is a huge appetite from commercial companies to be part of 2012."

Top tier sponsors have exclusive marketing rights within their sector as a partner for London 2012, and use of the somewhat controversial Games logo.

There is also exclusive access and marketing rights to Team GB and Paralympic GB for Beijing 2008 and Vancouver 2010.

International programme

Chris Townsend, the London 2012 organising committee's commercial director, said: "It has become apparent over the last year or so that there was a great deal of interest from clothing and homeware companies so we decided to create this new category to harness that interest."

It is hoped that as many as 15 second-tier sponsors will be announced by the end of 2007.

They will have to wait until after the 2008 games in Beijing before they can be associated with the famous five-ring symbol.

The Locog sponsorship schemes are separate from the International Olympic Committee's Top Partners programme, which has big name sponsors including Samsung, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Visa.