UEFA Europa League third qualifying round draw takes place at 12pm BST on Friday

West Ham United one of 29 seeded teams in the draw

Fans can watch the draw live on uefa.com

West Ham United’s 2016/17 European quest begins on Friday when the draw for the UEFA Europa League third qualifying round is held.The Hammers join the likes of Dimitri Payet’s former clubs Lille and Saint-Etienne of France, Dutch club AZ Alkmaar and Germans Hertha Berlin in entering the competition at this stage.However, none of the above will form West Ham’s opponents when the draw is made at 12noon BST (1pm CET) , as Slaven Bilic’s side have been seeded in Group 5 and will face one of the following: Grasshoppers (Switzerland) or KR Reykjavik (Iceland), Videoton (Hungary) or Cukaricki (Serbia), Shakhtyor Soligorsk (Belarus) or Domzale (Slovenia), IFK Goteborg (Sweden) or Piast Gliwice (Poland), Admira Wacker Moedling (Austria) or Kapaz (Azerbaijan) or Viitorul Constanta (Romania).The draw will be streamed live on uefa.com and takes place at UEFA HQ in Nyon, Switzerland at 12pm BST on Friday, when all eyes will be on the process to decide who the Hammers’ first opponents in competitive action of the 2016/17 season will be.Some 33 clubs will qualify for the third qualifying round from the second qualifying round ties being played this week and next, and they will be joined by the 25 sides who enter at this stage.The highest-ranked potential opponent West Ham could face are Grasshoppers of Switzerland, who have a UEFA coefficient of 9.755. Pierluigi Tami’s side led three times before being held to a 3-3 first-leg draw in Reykjavik on Thursday evening.Elsewhere, Videoton beat Cukaricki 2-0, Soligorsk and Domzale drew 1-1, IFK Goteborg beat Gliwice 3-0 and Admira Wacker defeated Kapaz by a single goal.Distance-wise, the longest-possible trip West Ham could make would be to the 2,306-mile journey to Ganja in Azerbaijan, where Kapaz play at the 27,000-capacity Ganja City Stadium.On the flip side, the shortest distance the Hammers could travel would be to fly 483 miles to Zurich in Switzerland to face Grasshoppers at the Letzigrund stadium.For the draw, the teams are split into five groups containing an equal number of seeded and unseeded teams. Each seeded club will meet an unseeded club from within the same group.Ties will be played on Thursday 28 July and Thursday 4 August.The Hammers will be embarking upon their eighth European campaign, with victory in the 1964/65 European Cup Winners Cup ranking as one of the finest moments in the Club’s history.They also reached the final of the same competition in 1975/76 and have more recently competed in the UEFA Cup or Europa League in 1999/2000, 2006/07 and 2015/16.