British business must dig deep to plug a £100 million hole in the 2012 Olympic sports funding plan by backing a new national sponsorship scheme, a Cabinet minister said yesterday.

Andy Burnham, the culture secretary, will launch the ‘Medal Hopes’ campaign after Beijing in a bid to cover the shortfall so athletes do not suffer funding cuts as they train for the London Games.

In light of Britain’s best Olympics for nearly a century, he believes companies will flock to be associated with the next Rebecca Adlington, the double Olympic swimming freestyle champion, or a future Chris Hoy, the super-cyclist with three gold medals around his neck.

“This Olympics has gripped people in a way I have never seen before. Everyone wants a piece of it,” he said, after arriving in Beijing ahead of Gordon Brown, the prime minister. “It is about saying to business – ‘get on board, join the effort’ - contribute regionally, nationally or whatever level you can. This will be the only official route for an association with the team preparing for 2012.”

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Ministers claim to have a “credible” scheme to raise the £79 million still needed to fund the target of finishing fourth in the 2012 medals table.

The first £21 million is to be honoured with additional Lottery funds after UK Sport, the funding agency for elite sport, spent the money this financial year.

Details of the scheme are still sketchy and it is not clear exactly what it is that ministers have to offer potential sponsors. Mr Burnham suggested naming rights to the Olympic venues could be sold, although that could only come into effect after 2012 because rules dictate they must be free of advertising during the Games.

Boris Johnson, the London mayor, could block such a plan because it is the London taxpayer that will pay for their upkeep after the Games and naming rights could subsidise maintenance costs.

Athletes funded by the Lottery could also be called on for promotional work but there are already huge demands on their time from their personal and sports governing body sponsors. UK Sport only has a contractual right to five days a year from each athlete receiving grants.

Another challenge will be to find sponsors that do not compete with those already backing Olympians. For example, Sky would not permit the hugely successful track cyclists to carry the logo of a rival broadcaster after it agreed its own multi-million pound deal with the team.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is the credit crunch and an acknowledgement that the sports sponsorship market is already crowded. The government will be competing for money with London 2012, which holds all the official Olympic rights and is halfway through a £650 million sponsorship drive to help cover the £2bn cost of staging the Games.

Mr Burnham insisted there was money to go round, adding that the taxpayer would not be asked to underwrite the full £100 million.

“To give a guarantee for the full four years would be to say we are not going to have any private funding success. I am absolutely confident we will,” he said. “There is no panic and there is no downgrading of our aspirations for 2012. We all have a vested interest in having the strongest team in London.”

The problem of the missing millions arose after Mr Brown announced a £600 million six-year funding package in the March 2006 Budget when he was Chancellor. The condition of an extra £200 million in Exchequer funding plus £300 million of Lottery money was that £100 million – split into £20 million tranches over five years - would be found from the private sector.