West Ham United have been named the preferred bidder to become tenants of London's Olympic Stadium.

Although the switch from Upton Park has not been rubber stamped, today's news means that the Hammers are extremely close to having a new home ground.

The Premier League side were chosen as the first bidders following a meeting of the London Legacy Development Corporation's board earlier today.

It is believed that four organisations in total registered an interest in taking over the £429m venue.

In a joint statement on the club's official website, owners David Gold and David Sullivan expressed their delight at the decision.

"We believe that this move, together with the realisation of other key goals that the board set out to achieve from the outset, will play a huge part in helping to realise our ambitious vision to move the club to the next level on behalf of our fantastic and deserving fans," they said.

"Our absolute priority is to take them with us, as well as enticing those supporters that have previously eluded us due to barriers such as affordability and accessibility.

"We also wish to extend our social inclusion agenda to encourage greater community cohesion and expand our equalities and diversity work to make both West Ham and football as a whole more accessible to key target groups. We realised our lifelong ambition upon becoming chairmen of the club we both so passionately support. We are dedicated to West Ham United and the stadium for the long haul. We are now committed to working with the LLDC in full consultation with our supporters to finalise our plans to make the stadium our home.

"We are ambitious for our great club and aim to set the benchmark for visiting away and neutral football supporters from across the globe to come and enjoy the iconic stadium and be part of our Premier League club experience."

Should West Ham conclude the deal, construction work means that the club are unlikely to play a competitive fixture in the stadium until the summer of 2016.