The owner of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport is poised to appoint BDO Stoy Hayward to seek a swift sale of the business.

Sport Media Group, which bought the titles for £50m in December 2007, ceased trading on Friday after admitting that an "insufficient recovery" since poor sales in December had left it cash-strapped and "uncertain of support" from its bankers.

Following crisis talks with Royal Bank of Scotland, the company has been forced to seek to appoint an administrator as soon as is practicably possible, with BDO thought to be close to being announced.

BDO will seek to sell the business, which started as the Sunday Sport in 1986, or be forced to close the operation. One analyst believes that it could be a difficult task to find a buyer.

"I suspect the queue of buyers will not be particularly long," said the media analyst." They are bottom of the pile in national newspaper terms if you look at the simplest metrics, such as revenues and circulation. And by their own admission they failed to see a recovery. It is a difficult place to be but then you never know."

In February 2009 the company unsuccessfully tried to sell the business after receiving "a number of unsolicited approaches".

If no buyer is found, it will be the first closure of a UK national newspaper since News International folded midmarket tabloid Today in November 1995.

SMG, which in 2009 was saved from going out of business by former proprietor and West Ham co-owner David Sullivan, had looked like it might have survived the downturn after last month forecasting earnings to be "in excess" of £1m for the year and securing funding through to March 2013.

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