The John Lewis deal, which will involve merchandise being sold through flagship stores in Oxford Street and the one next to the Olympic Park in Stratford which is due for completion in 2011, has taken LOCOG well past the £600 million mark and closer to its target of £700 miillion from domestic sponsorship - a target Deighton feels will be comfortably reached within the next year.

"In the next 12 months there will be a steady trickle of deals," Deighton said.

"But the main emphasis now is on actually starting to work with our sponsors.

"The biggest remaining part of my budget is the bit I feel most comfortable about because I feel our tickets are going to sell like hot cakes.

"We can’t start selling tickets until 2011, but we have already started work on getting people excited about them, and the target for sales is £375 million.

"We feel very good about that."

London 2012 now has seven Tier One sponsors, six Tier Two, and 13 Tier Three, of which John Lewis is the most recently announced.

And Deighton made it clear that there would be no need for a glut of additional deals.

"There are limits on the numbers of deals we can do, but none that are going to bite," he said.

"Our remaining deals are almost certainly going to be Tier Twos and Threes.

"We will be comfortably inside any limits we have set because of the quality and scale of deals we have already.

"We don’t need to dilute the programme for values that wouldn’t makes sense to us or the other partners."

In broad terms, the projected LOCOG budget breaks down like this: £900 million from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and television rights, £700 million from domestic sponsorship, £375 million from ticket sales and an additional £75 million from merchandising.

Deighton added: "Having the use of a flagship store in Stratford is obviously very helpful to us.

"But we share the same core values with John Lewis, and that’s what held us together until we could figure out the details of the deal."

Andy Street, managing director of John Lewis, commented: "If we had not been in the Olympic Park it would have been less likely we would done the deal.

"But we were very quick out of the blocks to say we would be in the Olympic Park.

"We backed the original bid and we are very proud to announce this partnership with London 2012.

"Sustainability and community are at the heart of our business and we are therefore delighted to be involved with the regeneration of East London through anchoring the Olympic development in Stratford."

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