Coventry City Football Club’s historic final game at their Highfield Road ground proved a massive winner for the Coventry Evening Telegraph and its website, icCoventry.

Two special supplements, one published in advance of the last match and one published after to commemorate the game, proved a huge hit with readers, boosting sales of the newspaper and hits on its website.

The 12-page supplement covering the last match was packed with pictures of fans. It referred readers to further photographs posted on the icCoventry website which, as a result, attracted a huge increase in hits: 55,000 page impressions were recorded on one day compared to a typical 30,000 on a normal day.

The unique 40-page supplement published in advance of the game also proved to be a winner.

The supplement, featuring the 106-year history of the ground and memories from former managers, including Jimmy Hill, ex-players and former football writers on the newspaper, led to a sales increase of over 3,000 copies on the day.

Both supplements, and their respective web links, led to extra orders for copies of the newspaper from readers at home and from countries around the world, including Australia, Canada and America.

Alan Kirby, editor of the Evening Telegraph, said: “The nostalgia supplement was a natural for the paper, as was the last game supplement with thousands of faces. Readers loved them both.

“The link with icCoventry gave us a phenomenal extra boost and this is another example of how newspapers can work hand in hand with their websites to maximise opportunities through cross promotion.”

The paper is planning similar links for future public events such as carnivals, major sports events and festivals.