Why does Xiaohongshu (小红书) want to buy the World Cup?

A surprising deal — and a clear motive

It has been reported that Xiaohongshu (小红书) has secured the 2026 FIFA World Cup rights for the U.S.-Canada-Mexico tournament cycle, becoming—alongside China Media Group (中央广播电视总台) and Migu (咪咕)—the only holder with live, rebroadcast and short‑video rights. On the surface the move looks odd. Xiaohongshu is best known as a female‑leaning lifestyle and shopping community; the World Cup is raw, real‑time sport. So why buy it?

Growth by video and by people

The blunt answer: growth. Xiaohongshu’s user metrics have climbed—monthly actives reported above 400 million and daily actives reportedly over 170 million—and the company is widely discussed as a late‑stage private tech with IPO and valuation expectations. Sports rights are a blunt instrument to raise both time spent (middle‑to‑long‑form, horizontal video) and user breadth (bring in more male users). The app has already moved into live and longer video formats, bought Bundesliga rights, and reportedly saw competitors such as Douyin (抖音) step back after ROI calculations. The World Cup is a high‑leverage way to accelerate both videoization and “people‑breaking” strategies.

Product fit, cultural risk and lifestyle framing

Xiaohongshu’s twin‑column, image+text feed and active community discussion are well suited to match‑day commentary, outfits, viewing‑party posts and short‑form replays in a way that a single‑stream short‑video app may not. Can the platform absorb an influx of sports fans without diluting its tone? That is the central question. Unlike strongly bounded subcultures — think Bilibili (哔哩哔哩) when it went mainstream — Xiaohongshu’s lifestyle framing is inherently more porous: football can be repackaged as social ritual, fashion, nightlife or a home‑entertainment moment, not just tactics and tactics talk.

A large operational test ahead

The deal is also an organizational test. Xiaohongshu recently reorganized its leadership and set up a dedicated AI division; it has consolidated community, commerce and commercial teams into a tighter operating center. Handling massive concurrent live audiences, real‑time highlights, creator activation and commerce integration is a different scale of execution—last World Cup live aggregates in China reportedly reached billions of views and tens of millions of concurrent viewers on rival platforms. If Xiaohongshu pulls this off, it will prove the company can run beyond curated shopping and beauty guides; if it stumbles, the fallout will be technical, cultural and commercial. Either way, the World Cup is a wager on turning a niche lifestyle network into a national media platform.