Britain’s dreams left ashore

Sir Keith Mills was last night standing down key sponsors preparing to back the £100 million campaign to win the America’s Cup for Britain. The decision to postpone the next staging of the cup until 2011 is appearing more likely after the legal stand-off between two sailing billionaires hurt Britain’s Team Origin at a crucial time.

Mills set up Origin with sponsorship deals and crew recruitment geared to a competition in 2009, with the team’s first boat in the water for a maiden outing as early as January. Meanwhile, Mills was hoping to introduce his backers within a matter of days. But the legal challenge mounted by the BMW Oracle team, led by Larry Ellison, the computer entrepreneur, against Team Alinghi, the Swiss holders headed by Ernesto Bertarelli, the pharmaceuticals magnate, means that delays are inevitable.

Many of Origin’s 100-strong team were already packing for what they believed would be their headquarters in Valencia, which hosted this year’s America’s Cup. They are allowed to take their families, which means that Mills has been investing in apartments in Valencia while they have been planning their lives around a 2009 America’s Cup.

But everything is on hold until Ellison and Bertarelli sort out their legal differences over the way the next cup will be run.

No Beckham, no deal

David Beckham’s appeal may be running out for Steve McClaren, but he remains box office around the world. Sydney’s Telstra Stadium has sold its capacity of 80,000 seats for an exhibition game between the Los Angeles Galaxy and Sydney FC next week, but the former England captain is such a draw that organisers say their contract with the Galaxy allows them to postpone the match if Beckham cannot make it.

Hatton keeps both eyes on the prize

How to avoid the match of the year/decade/century, depending on your level of intensity about the importance of England’s European Championship qualifying match last night against Croatia. Well, for Ricky Hatton, it was light entertainment before he flies off to Las Vegas today for his world welterweight title bout against Floyd Mayweather. He spent the evening keeping one eye on the football and the other watching Cinderella Man, which stars Russell Crowe and is the true story of James J. Braddock, a boxer who overcame adversity to become world heavyweight champion in 1935.

For Arsenal’s all-conquering female footballers, it was a crucial quarter-final fixture at home to Lyons in the Uefa Women’s Cup, the trophy they lifted last season to become the first English team to do so.

— The surge in popularity of rugby union on the back of England’s World Cup campaign is bringing new sponsors. Barclays Commercial Bank is the latest to join in, announcing it will be the broadcast sponsor for Sky Sports’ rugby union coverage for this season. What may seem to be a belated deal will still give Barclays access to all Sky’s coverage. And the price tag, thought to be £1 million, is one of the more lucrative deals to have surfaced after the World Cup.

E-mail: theinsider@thetimes.co.uk