The Portsmouth News is reporting a 40 per cent increase in unique users of its website following the success of the city's football team against Manchester United in their FA Cup.

Sales director Ken Sim said: "Portsmouth's victory over Man United saw website visitors on the Saturday and Sunday increase by 40 per cent, with page views up by 61.6 per cent compared to a win against Sunderland two weeks earlier.

"In addition, we also sold around 3,000 extra papers on the Monday following the match."

Portsmouth is the only Premiership team to go through to the semi-finals of the FA Cup this year.

It is the first time in 100 years that three teams from outside the top tier of English football have been in the FA Cup semi-finals.

One of the other teams, Barnsley FC, has been given extensive support by its local paper the Barnsley Chronicle.

Chronicle editor Robert Cockcroft said: "In this week's paper we are doing an extra broadsheet page for the sports section, a news page inside and giving the story front page presence, along with the daily news updates on the website.

"We are also planning a 20-page supplement to go out on the Friday before the match."

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