小红书拿下世界杯——一个"女性平台"怎么变成了主流媒体

On May 28, 2026,

China's internet industry

had a major piece of news.

Xiaohongshu announced:

it has become

a rights-holding broadcaster

of the 2026 U.S.-Canada-Mexico World Cup.

That is to say,

all 104 matches

Chinese viewers

can, on Xiaohongshu,

watch for free.

This news,

on the surface, is just

a sports-broadcasting story.

But behind it

runs a

longer story —

how a former

"women's community"

step by step

walked into the position of mainstream media.

Today,

starting from this event,

we'll discuss a few questions:

why is Xiaohongshu doing the World Cup?

Why are the "borders" of Chinese internet platforms

becoming more and more blurred?

When a lifestyle-sharing platform

starts doing news

and doing sport,

what does it mean

for us ordinary users?

Let's first cover the facts.

The 2026 World Cup

is a special World Cup —

it's being held in the USA,

Canada,

and Mexico —

three countries.

The participating teams

have expanded from the previous 32

to 48.

The schedule runs 39 days,

all 104 matches.

It starts June 11

and ends July 19.

In China,

the rights to broadcast this great event

are very scarce.

According to the official arrangement,

China Media Group itself

is the rights owner.

Beyond that,

only a few platforms

are authorized to do internet broadcasting.

Four years ago,

during the last World Cup,

Migu and Douyin

were the main online platforms.

But this time,

Xiaohongshu has stepped to the front —

it has partnered with China Media Group

to become, apart from China Media Group

and Migu,

the only one authorized,

on the public internet,

to carry real-time relay,

delayed relay,

and short-video highlights —

i.e. that platform.

Xiaohongshu also announced

it has invited

Fan Zhiyi,

Xie Hui and others —

very familiar commentary guests

from China's football circle —

to accompany viewers throughout.

The user experience side

is direct:

open the Xiaohongshu app

or the Xiaohongshu web page,

and you can watch for free.

And it supports

casting from your phone to a TV.

For many people,

watching football

has become more convenient than before.

But

this thing —

the really interesting part

isn't "where I can watch football."

What's really interesting

is Xiaohongshu's own

identity transformation.

Let's first look at

Xiaohongshu's roots.

Xiaohongshu was founded in 2013;

at the very beginning

it was a

small community for sharing overseas-shopping experiences.

Later it slowly expanded into

travel,

beauty,

food,

fashion —

everything you can see

related to "lifestyle"

can, on Xiaohongshu,

be shared

and discussed.

On the Chinese internet

there's a very popular word

called "种草" (zhòngcǎo).

It means:

you see someone share something

and feel you want it yourself.

Xiaohongshu,

you could say,

is the biggest bearer

of the word "种草."

How big is Xiaohongshu today?

Over 400 million monthly active users,

about 170 million daily active users.

Among China's mainstream internet platforms,

it is already

one of the heavyweights.

But compared with other big platforms

it has one obvious characteristic:

the proportion of female users

is clearly higher than male.

Many people even feel

that "Xiaohongshu"

itself has a kind of

female-leaning atmosphere.

For Xiaohongshu

this is its

unique advantage —

in China,

no other platform

can, like it,

serve female users with such precision.

But this is also

its growth bottleneck.

To push from 200 million DAU,

upward,

it must

attract more male users.

So

what kind of content

do men most love to watch?

Sports —

the biggest single piece.

Especially football —

the largest single sports content in the world.

So this time Xiaohongshu grabbing the World Cup

isn't just a

one-off content purchase;

it's a planned

identity shift.

Xiaohongshu has itself disclosed

one set of numbers:

on the platform, users interested in football

already exceed one hundred million.

Over the past year,

football-related content

saw engagement

double from before.

In other words,

"Xiaohongshu + football"

has, in fact,

slowly been growing already.

The World Cup

is, of this turn,

the brightest stage.

There's another piece of background

also worth mentioning.

At the last World Cup, four years ago,

Douyin was one of

the most important internet broadcasters.

And this time,

Douyin barely appeared

in the rights bidding.

The reasons,

the industry has a few guesses.

One is the rights price —

World Cup rights

are extremely expensive,

and for a

near-the-ceiling

super-platform,

spending more big money

to acquire new users has marginal benefit

that is no longer high.

Another reason

is platform strategy.

Douyin, over the past few years,

in long-form video

and sports rights,

has met regulatory and market tests,

and may have chosen

a more conservative resource allocation.

Whatever the reason,

the position it vacated

was caught exactly by Xiaohongshu.

At this point,

we can make a

somewhat bigger judgment.

Chinese internet platforms

show one very clear trend:

every platform with its own character,

after it grows up,

eventually wants to do "everything."

WeChat,

from a chat app,

made itself into a payment system,

into a mini-program ecosystem,

into an entry point people can hardly live without.

Douyin,

from a short-video app,

made itself into e-commerce,

into local services,

into

half a search engine.

Today's Xiaohongshu

is walking down

the same path —

it no longer is just

the "种草 community";

it wants to become

a comprehensive

content platform.

News — it wants in;

search — it wants in;

now sport —

it also wants in.

This "want to do everything" approach

has two sides.

The good side:

for users

everything

can be completed inside one app.

Convenient.

The bad side:

our attention

and our data

will also, more and more,

concentrate in a few super apps.

When a platform

does everything,

its influence on your life

also grows.

How much of your time

you put into one and the same app

is, in fact, a

question worth thinking about.

For Xiaohongshu itself,

this World Cup

is not without risks.

What it is good at

is slow browsing,

slow recommendation —

photo+text and short video.

And sports live broadcast

is a completely different kind of content —

real-time,

dense,

very different in flavor from a "photo+text community."

If it isn't done well,

not only will it fail to retain

the new male users,

it may also make

older users feel

"Xiaohongshu has changed."

For many platforms,

after growing up,

one of the hardest things

is:

how to grow up

without losing yourself.

Finally,

let me leave you with two questions.

The first:

Are you willing

for all of your content —

news,

social,

shopping,

sport —

to take place in one app?

Or

do you prefer

different things

on different apps?

The second,

perhaps harder:

when a platform originally serving

a specific group of people

grows up

and becomes more and more "mass" —

do you think

what it loses,

versus what it gains,

which is more?

These two questions

have no standard answer.

But they

are worth thinking about slowly.

Okay.

That's all for today.

See you in the next story.