Securing the World Cup copyright, Xiaohongshu has acquired this summer's "super content library".

After CCTV acquired the World Cup copyright, the distribution table quickly saw an unexpected yet reasonable new outcome.

The Sports Industry Ecosystem has learned that Xiaohongshu will become the rights-holding broadcaster for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, obtaining the live broadcast rights, video-on-demand rights, and other rights for all matches of this FIFA World Cup from CCTV. It is understood that the price Xiaohongshu paid was not higher than that of previous editions. It was not until the final stage of the negotiation that Xiaohongshu showed a determined attitude to "secure the rights".

Since Migu had previously purchased the copyright for this World Cup in a package deal during the negotiation, at this point, the media broadcast pattern for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in China, led by CCTV and involving Migu and Xiaohongshu, has basically been finalized.

Behind this, it is not just that the World Cup has a new new-media entry point. It also means that sports copyright has for the first time been pushed to the core position by a platform known for its community and lifestyle content.

The approach of Chinese Internet platforms to sports copyright is being redefined.

Is World Cup dissemination entering a new era?

Looking back, for a long time, Chinese football fans' viewing habits for the World Cup were completely shaped by large TV screens and CCTV.

The change began with the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

At that time, Youku spent a huge amount of money to become the designated new-media official partner of CCTV, and Migu also entered the arena in a high-profile manner. Thus, the World Cup officially entered the Internet video era from the TV era.

However, the copyright logic at that time was more like "watching TV on a small screen". Long-video platforms and operators solved the problems of screen migration and viewing convenience. In the past, users sat in front of the TV, and now they hold their mobile phones and iPads. The core purpose of users entering the platform was still to consume the complete 90-minute live broadcast.

Internet platforms were more like a more advanced broadcasting channel and had not really subverted the dissemination method of the World Cup as a traditional core sports asset.

In the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Douyin's entry broke the linear narrative of traditional long videos.

The traffic entry points and consumption scenarios of the World Cup were completely reconstructed. Short-video platforms not only hosted the live broadcasts but also disassembled the matches into a vast amount of fragmented content.

Messi's championship, Mbappé's hat-trick, the celebration in the Argentine dressing room, and the popular catchphrases from famous commentators were re-edited, algorithmically recommended, and virally spread. Users didn't even need to watch the whole match to participate in the World Cup discussions through highlights, catchphrases, and user-generated content.

From then on, the World Cup evolved from a series of rigorous sporting events into a one-month "super content library" and "emotion amplifier".

Xiaohongshu's World Cup is more than just football

Xiaohongshu's "surprising" acquisition of the World Cup copyright was not a whim.

In earlier communications, insiders at Xiaohongshu mentioned that the platform hopes to "meet the needs of football fans for watching and discussing matches in one stop".

To complete this crucial puzzle, Xiaohongshu has made multiple rounds of preparations in the past few years. It started with popularizing peripheral lifestyle knowledge such as football jersey dressing and on-site match watching. During the 2022 World Cup, it signed well-known coaches like Zinedine Zidane and José Mourinho and cooperated with national teams such as Spain and Switzerland to form the "Xiaohong Team". It also hosted offline meet-and-greets with players like Kaká and Emiliano Martínez and facilitated the settlement of top players like Mbappé.

The social relationships and historical memories related to football have already been lightly stored as assets on the platform.

Since continuously acquiring the rights to events such as the German Super Cup, the Bundesliga, the Chinese national team, and the Northeast Super League, Xiaohongshu has officially integrated live broadcasts, commentaries, bullet screens, and post-match discussions into the same content consumption chain.

From this perspective, Xiaohongshu's acquisition of the World Cup copyright is not just a step forward based on its previous football content layout but also an inevitable choice in its own development cycle.

It can be said that Xiaohongshu has reached a stage where it needs a super content engine to expand its growth and community boundaries.

"Through this World Cup cooperation, Xiaohongshu hopes to increase the number of platform users, especially the diversity of its user composition," an expert in the Internet sports industry told the Sports Industry Ecosystem.

The World Cup is undoubtedly such a "nuclear weapon" that can provide clear new-user acquisition entry points, content topics, and search demands in a short period.

More importantly, the World Cup brings not a single group of people but an opportunity for core football fans, general sports users, and event-oriented viewers to enter the community simultaneously. For Xiaohongshu, live football matches can meet the platform's long-term need for male user growth and also attract the rapidly growing female fan group in the world of competitive sports in recent years.

Meanwhile, just as hosting the Olympics has a transformative impact on the infrastructure and consumption of the host city, acquiring the World Cup copyright is not just a matter of traffic for any Internet platform.

During the live broadcasts of the Bundesliga and the Chinese national team matches, Xiaohongshu's live broadcast image quality and frame rate were recognized by some football fans. However, product flaws such as the unclear match entry were also frequently mentioned by users. Many fans didn't even know that Xiaohongshu had a PC live broadcast page. The longer schedule, more matches, and exponentially increased public attention of the World Cup will surely comprehensively test the platform's live broadcast stability, cross-device viewing experience, and real-time interaction ability.

Beyond hardware technology, Xiaohongshu also needs to improve its football operation ability in the short term. Pre-match schedule preheating, content preparation for teams and players, in-match commentary interaction and topic hosting, and post-match reviews, catchphrases, and fan discussions all require more industrialized and professional content organization.

In fact, during the 2025 Chinese tennis season, Xiaohongshu's cooperation with events such as the China Open and the Wuhan Open has demonstrated another way for the platform to engage in sports events.

Xiaohongshu's role was not limited to distributing event signals and official materials. It further got involved in player content, on-site spaces, support materials, community catchphrases, and user co-creation. Sabalenka's "fried rice", Gauff's "Fruit King" pennant, players' "four-panel comics" and "pull tabs" were not content centered around scores and schedules in traditional event dissemination, but they became the most memorable, shareable, and imitable scenes of the Chinese tennis season.

More importantly, the World Cup can also be deeply integrated with Xiaohongshu's internal ecosystem, forming a stable system for influencer content publishing, brand cooperation, and e-commerce conversion, which further determines that this copyright purchase will leave many long-term assets for the platform.

Xiaohongshu's product containers, which have been intensively updated in the past year, are providing new ways to absorb sports copyright.

The RED Selection Program gives official certification and traffic support to high-quality videos. The newly launched horizontal video on the APP can put videos, texts, and comment sections in a more immersive viewing interface. Coupled with previous product updates such as long texts, voice comments, and Q&A, as well as the emergence of new AI capabilities like RedSkill, Xiaohongshu's content production has become more diverse.

For Xiaohongshu, the World Cup is not only a super traffic battle but also an extreme stress test for upgrading its product, community, and commercialization capabilities around sports content.

From content to an ecological entry point, calculating the big picture of sports copyright

Globally, sports copyright is evolving from a simple live broadcast business of "you broadcast, I watch" into a more complex platform asset.

In the past, advertising and membership conversion were the main revenue channels for traditional platforms. However, as the business structures of Internet platforms become more complex, people are starting to calculate a more comprehensive "ecological big picture" for the value of sports copyright.

A top-level event can not only drive user growth, increase the platform's opening frequency, and complement the content ecosystem but also stimulate content creation, accumulate community discussions, attract more brand cooperation, and even directly serve e-commerce and offline local life. In the hands of platforms, sports copyright is evolving from a single content-on-demand source into an entry point with the potential to drive the entire platform's commercialization closed-loop.

This logic is particularly urgent for Xiaohongshu.

In the past year, while vigorously developing closed-loop e-commerce, Xiaohongshu has cooperated with Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, and Meituan. Through note links and direct product recommendations, it connects advertising traffic to external e-commerce, local life, and instant retail scenarios, integrating the platform's superior search, recommendation, and consumption decision-making capabilities into a larger transaction system, aiming to become the upstream of all transactions.

After the World Cup enters Xiaohongshu, it will also be incorporated into this logic - the live matches will form an entry point, and search, content, brand cooperation, and consumption scenarios will become a longer consumption chain.

Overseas, a similar scenario has already played out. After Amazon's Prime Video acquired the rights to events such as the NFL, NBA, and WNBA, sports events have become important content anchors in the Prime ecosystem to increase user activity, membership value, and drive e-commerce traffic on the main platform. In TikTok and YouTube's cooperation with FIFA, the World Cup has been disassembled into a content stream that can continuously attract traffic, stimulate creation, and drive store conversions.

Extended reading: Can the World Cup be "tasted" by only broadcasting the first 10 minutes?

"Compared with business, Xiaohongshu values more the ability of the World Cup, a super IP, to stimulate the community ecosystem. Acquiring the World Cup copyright means that Xiaohongshu users can legally post match clips in the community and create secondary content based on these materials. At the source of the content ecosystem, this forms an insurmountable moat for platforms without copyright," analyzed a professional in the sports industry.

It is not hard to imagine that various vertical categories in the Xiaohongshu community will encourage users to discuss and share the World Cup in various ways this summer, allowing ordinary users to fully unleash their creative abilities. This is also one of the reasons why Xiaohongshu's World Cup is worth looking forward to.

We can assert that in the competition for sports copyright in the next decade, the focus of platform competition will shift from short-term returns during the event to whether large-scale copyright can be integrated into a larger platform ecosystem. Before spending a large amount of money on sports copyright, it is not just a matter of "broadcasting and watching" but a process of redefining the value of sports copyright according to one's own business model.

Looking back at this moment in the future, this may be the industry moment when Xiaohongshu acquired the World Cup copyright under great operational pressure.

Perhaps such a judgment is a bit optimistic, but the cautious expectation and active support for such "disruptive innovation" cooperation have always been the values of the Sports Industry Ecosystem on the side of industry development. This is not only about business but also about our underlying values - sports should, in a more boundaryless form, become a mainstream lifestyle for a wider range of people.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Sports Industry Ecosystem", author: ECO Keti. It is published by 36Kr with permission.