Leyton Orient, the bottom-placed Coca-Cola League One club, are favourites to move into the Olympic Stadium after the 2012 Olympic Games, sharing the arena with athletics and possibly a rugby union team.

Negotiations are under way with the East London club in a deal that would allow the stadium, which would be reduced to 25,000 seats from 80,000 after 2012, to be retained as the national athletics centre and for local community use.

Barry Hearn, the Orient chairman, said yesterday: “We are the only club interested as far as we are aware. I am considering anything for the future sustainable benefit of Leyton Orient. We have spent quite a lot of money on our current home (Brisbane Road), but nothing is for ever and six years is not a lot of time. I would not rule out a move.”

Hearn, also successful as an entrepreneur in snooker and boxing, praised the community work of his football club and said that there was a “certain synergy” with the regeneration plans of the Olympics, which are aimed at transforming a large area of East London.

The Orient chairman pointed out that, for Barclays Premiership clubs such as Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United, a 25,000-seat stadium is too small. Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, and Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Olympic Organising Committee, insist that they will keep to their pledge that an athletics track is retained, serving events such as the annual Grand Prix meeting.

The Olympic village will provide about 10,000 new homes and Hearn obviously hopes that this may provide a new reservoir of supporters. Brisbane Road, Orient’s home since 1937, has a capacity of fewer than 8,000.

After the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, the stadium in Eastlands was reconfigured for Manchester City with a capacity of 47,500 and the track was removed. UK Athletics is determined that the Olympic Stadium will not suffer the same fate.

It is expected that HOK Sport, the stadium’s architect, will build an 80,000-seat venue for the Games that would be scaled down to 25,000 after 2012, with the potential to go up to 40,000 or 50,000 if Britain were to stage the quadrennial European Athletics Championships or biennial World Championships.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sportsweek on Sunday, Lord Coe said: “I do take very seriously the commitment we made in Singapore [when London secured the Games in July 2005]. They were not warm words to get us through a difficult Wednesday [the day of the vote]. They actually meant something.”

The decision to have an athletics legacy was influential in the poll, with several members of the International Olympic Committee with an athletics background persuaded to back London because they wanted a new stadium to stage annual meetings in Britain.

If Orient were to agree to move their home after 2012, this would also satisfy Jowell and Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister. Jowell has said that Caborn has been keener on having a football legacy than herself, but a multipurpose venue would solve that issue.

It is possible that a Guinness Premiership rugby union club, possibly London Wasps, would share the arena.