Niche sports are not enough. Xiaohongshu also needs "major sports".
Xiaohongshu, which is good at creating trends for niche sports, has finally turned its resources towards "major sports".
Recently, Xiaohongshu officially announced that it has purchased the distribution rights of the 2026 FIFA World Cup from CCTV.
This means that in China, Xiaohongshu will be a platform with the rights to live broadcast, re - broadcast, and on - demand (including short videos and highlights) of the World Cup, in addition to CCTV and Migu Video. It also has the "super secondary creation material library" for the most important sports event this summer.
Image source: unsplash
Xiaohongshu, which is good at turning niche sports into a lifestyle mainly for women, has finally shifted its focus to the World Cup, which is mainly popular among the male population. Like Douyin and Kuaishou, to become a major platform, one needs sports event IPs.
Xiaohongshu also needs major sports.
Xiaohongshu's "Sports Journey"
As a lifestyle platform, Xiaohongshu didn't initially focus on the most popular sports in the world. Instead, it is better at screening potential niche new outdoor and sports trends from users' shared content and popularizing them in the public life.
Camping is the first successful case. According to Yicai Magazine, in 2020, Xiaohongshu noticed a 271% increase in the number of camping notes on the platform and decided to "fully invest in camping" through topic operation, creating IPs, and introducing camping site brands. By 2022, the number of notes related to camping had exceeded that of beauty - related content and became a popular trend in public life.
Next, we can often "discover" popular sports on Xiaohongshu, such as frisbee, land surfing, paddleboarding, and pickleball. From the notes, we can learn about the consumable aspects of these sports - from gameplay to equipment, from clothing to social groups. The long - tail effect of niche sports has become the content precipitation on the platform and laid the platform's tone.
Image source: LA Times
For more popular sports like football, Xiaohongshu is also gradually integrating them into the platform in a more life - oriented way. During the previous World Cup cycle, Xiaohongshu invited Zinedine Zidane, Jose Mourinho, Jesse Lingard, etc. to open personal accounts on the platform to interact with users in a more private and relaxed way. At the same time, the platform also signed contracts with the Spanish team and the Belgian team to form its own "Xiaohong Team".
In 2024, Xiaohongshu signed Kylian Mbappé as its brand ambassador and collaborated with Liu Xiang to shoot a fun TVC. The "French Mbappé language" was used to tell the platform's uniqueness during the Olympic year - everything related to sports and beyond can be searched on Xiaohongshu.
In 2025, Xiaohongshu officially started copyright cooperation and obtained the rights to events such as the German Super Cup, the German Table Tennis Bundesliga, the U23 Chinese Football Team Asian Cup, and the Northeast Regional City Football League, and tried to re - broadcast and live - broadcast these events.
Users' enthusiasm for sports and outdoor activities is also reflected in the data. As of July 2025, the year - on - year growth rate of searches for sports and outdoor categories on Xiaohongshu was 72%, attracting 230 million people interested in sports and outdoor activities, and the number of related notes reached 220 million.
In the field of football, Xiaohongshu also has a certain foundation. Recent platform data shows that the number of users interested in football on Xiaohongshu has exceeded 100 million. In the past year, the interactive discussion volume of football - related content has increased by more than 100% year - on - year.
According to LatePost, Xiaohongshu internally hopes to break through the 200 - million mark of its existing 170 - million daily active users through the World Cup project. Secondly, it aims to attract more male users and change the platform's user structure.
Can Xiaohongshu, which has conquered niche sports, break into the core circle of major sports?
In today's era of highly differentiated interests, the World Cup is still one of the few major sports IPs that can bring different groups of people together. For Xiaohongshu, a platform still seeking growth, the concentrated traffic brought by the World Cup will be an opportunity for the platform to leap forward.
According to the FIFA 2022 Qatar World Cup Audience Report, approximately 5 billion people participated in this sports event on different types of devices during the previous World Cup.
Image source: unsplash
According to the data of China Media Group, nearly 900 million users watched the games through China Media Group in nearly a month, and the content related to the event reached 25.427 billion person - times on all content media.
Four years ago, the daily active users of Douyin, which bought the World Cup copyright at that time, soared to 700 million. According to Yicai, the reason why Douyin didn't buy the World Cup copyright this year is mainly that the platform's growth has reached its ceiling, and the effect of attracting new users or commercial conversion brought by the event is limited, "the ROI doesn't add up".
Meanwhile, although the overall event cycle of this year's World Cup has been extended due to the expansion to 48 teams, due to the time - difference problem, the proportion of domestic audiences watching the live broadcast is estimated to be less than that of the previous World Cup. In fact, it was reported that Douyin considered only buying on - demand and secondary creation authorization, but unfortunately, the rights of live broadcast, on - demand, and secondary creation were not split, so it finally didn't make the purchase.
This also means that people's consumption of World Cup content this year will be more fragmented. It has become a more natural choice to watch highlights, clips, listen to analyses, and create secondary content and memes on social media. This is also a huge advantage for Xiaohongshu to enter the market.
LatePost analyzed that compared with the earlier approach that relied more on operation, Xiaohongshu's community now has more mature capabilities in product, operation, and R & D. In recent years, various new products launched by Xiaohongshu, such as long - text, voice function, and Q&A, have lowered the threshold for users to create and participate in interactions.
Meanwhile, by taking "interest" as the entry point and using scenarios to support detailed differences in operation, the platform can incubate segmented and resonant content, achieving more diverse content precipitation.
Therefore, in the face of the huge traffic wave of the World Cup, if Xiaohongshu's "system machine" operates efficiently enough, it can provide the required content for the large and diverse World Cup audience.
Meanwhile, the above - mentioned content and product experience will also determine whether the new users who flood into the platform during the event will stay in Xiaohongshu's community after the World Cup ends.
In the era of social media, "major sports" are moving towards daily life
Now, major sports IPs like the World Cup can still attract a large amount of attention, but the audiences who invest their attention no longer have a single demand.
Only by moving towards daily life can sports event IPs derive infinitely detailed content that can meet the needs of different groups.
Therefore, one of the characteristics of the current operation of "major sports" is decentralization.
Although Douyin didn't buy the World Cup copyright in China this year, at the international level, TikTok has reached an innovative cooperation relationship with FIFA and become the "Preferred Platform" for the FIFA World Cup 2026.
Under this cooperation, TikTok can not only live - broadcast some games, create interactive functions such as stickers and filters, and undertake brand advertising business, but also open press conferences and training sessions to some TikTok creators, supporting them to create more unique and immersive content. FIFA's move is mainly to open up the youth and female markets and make sports reach a wider group of people.
Commercial brands are also promoting sports into daily life.
In the past, the competition of World Cup advertisements meant that sports brands would find their most influential athlete stars to shoot a dream - creating and hero - making advertising blockbuster. Nike's past World Cup advertising blockbusters such as "Secret Tournament" and "Write the Future" are classic marketing works in the history of football.
But this year, Nike didn't release such an advertising film. Instead, it presented the signed football legend athletes and pop stars in a Polaroid way and previewed that there will be multiple "unexpected cross - border collaborations and cultural expressions" in the future.
Image source: Nike
This change essentially transforms the World Cup marketing strategy that originally relied on a single film to shock the world into a continuous and diverse cultural narrative that penetrates multiple circles.
As for Adidas, although the brand still created the World Cup promotional film "Wild Field Legend" this year, the "heroes" in it are "ordinary people" from the "wild fields". At the same time, in terms of products, Adidas has also prepared heavy - weight collaborations such as Kith x adidas x Messi, adidas Originals x BAPE®, Brain Dead x Disney x adidas, making football clothing popular on the streets.
Image source: Adidas
In March this year, Adidas also held a retro football market in Shanghai, combining the culture represented by football jerseys and the football heritage with Shanghai's street culture.
As the global official sponsor of the World Cup, Mengniu also released a series of advertising films titled "How to Go to the World Cup?" on June 1st, Children's Day, allowing Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and Lamine Yamal to have a dialogue with Chinese children, bringing the distant World Cup back to daily life and making the "high - flying" football stars "on an equal footing" with children.
Alien Energy Drink officially announced on June 1st that it has signed Cristiano Ronaldo as its brand ambassador, taking advantage of the fact that Ronaldo's nickname "Alien" is the same as the brand name and playing the meme "Aliens drink Alien Energy Drink".
In the coffee industry, two chain brands are directly competing during the World Cup. Luckin Coffee has become the Chinese - region sponsor of the Spanish national team and the Portuguese national team, while Cotti Coffee has cooperated with the Argentine national football team. They have simplified the World Cup into a relaxed daily activity of "buying coffee", allowing consumers to participate in this event through a cup of drink. Some netizens even joked: "Who would have thought that now when buying a cup of coffee, you have to choose to support Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi."
Image source: Luckin, Cotti
All the actions of these brands are to give football a more general popular - culture language. When brands are trying to communicate with segmented cultural circles, Xiaohongshu's "copyright - content - community - consumption" chain can undertake the cultural and commercial space.
Therefore, in this World Cup, Xiaohongshu not only needs to prove to users that it can handle different circles but also prove to commercial brands that it can handle the operation of major events.
Just as Douyin proved its status as a "national - level app" during the previous World Cup, Xiaohongshu also needs to prove through the World Cup that it can break into new circles and has the systematic ability to become an "infrastructure".
If this battle is fought well, we may see more of Xiaohongshu's presence in the Los Angeles Olympics two years later, and people won't be surprised by Xiaohongshu's involvement at that time.
This article is from the WeChat official account “Jinglian GymSquare” (ID: GymSquare), author: Fang Jiawen, published by 36Kr with authorization.