A regional daily newspaper has launched a paid-for football app on the back of a successful World Cup version this summer.

The Northern Echo has created an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch for news of its five main football clubs – Newcastle United, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Darlington and Hartlepool.

After a one-off payment of 59p, readers can download the app which will provide reports of every match, along with individual team ratings, league tables updated in real time, plus breaking news and gossip.

It has been launched following a successful World Cup app by the title, which was downloaded by thousands of people.

Editor Peter Barron said: “We did one in the summer for the World Cup, which we just did as an experiment really.

“It was free and we thought that apps were something that we needed to test the water with. We launched the World Cup app just so we could learn what was involved in developing an app.

“It proved to be very popular and we got quite good reviews on the back of it.

“Having done that, we thought we could do something that will have a commercial angle to it. We thought the best starting point was with the football clubs.

“I think it is something that we have to test really and see what take-up we get. We will just monitor it as we go along and if it is successful, we will look at other areas of our content that we can develop as apps.”

The Echo has secured app sponsors relating to its coverage of each club, whose logos will also appear on pages in the newspaper relating to the teams.