News Reporter |
News Editor | Liu Fangyuan
Thanks to the World Cup, Xiaohongshu’s app usage time surged by 2x month-over-month in July, daily note posts tripled compared to June, and the number of users watching live interactions for extended periods jumped nearly 5x year-over-year. On July 10, Xiaohongshu released these latest growth stats from the World Cup period.
When it comes to user acquisition—something everyone’s curious about—Xiaohongshu didn’t share exact numbers like the male user growth ratio. But Strawberry, the head of Xiaohongshu’s sports and outdoor community and World Cup operations, revealed in a media meeting that men made up about 60% of live viewers during the group stage, and that figure climbed to around 80% by the Round of 16.
Another shift in the user base: more people on Xiaohongshu are paying attention to sports. Strawberry noted that hundreds of thousands of users, who usually post about fashion or food, shared football-related notes for the first time during the World Cup, becoming a fresh wave of sports content creators.
Strawberry summed it up: more hardcore fans who really know and love football are flocking to Xiaohongshu. She shared feedback from new fans, saying some downloaded the app just for the World Cup and, after using it, completely changed their initial stereotypes—many have become regular, high-frequency users.
When Xiaohongshu announced it had secured World Cup broadcasting rights, the common explanation was that it’s gunning for 200 million daily active users. Based on the results and moves so far, whether that ambition pans out or not, the World Cup has already become a major milestone for Xiaohongshu’s sports content push.
Before this World Cup, Xiaohongshu had been running sports content on its platform for years, including previous World Cups where it invested resources.
Xiaohongshu’s data shows the first football note on the platform was posted on May 3, 2014, and the first professional football account joined in early 2015. Right now, the football community boasts 14 million notes and 1,640 grassroots football accounts.
With this heavy investment in the World Cup, Xiaohongshu aims to use it as a springboard to boost sports and fitness categories. Strawberry said in the meeting, “World Cup rights for a community aren’t just about driving a massive traffic wave—they act like a catalyst, sparking fresh content and new user groups.”
That catalytic strategy is already rolling out. On July 10, Xiaohongshu announced that 12 local football leagues from provinces and cities—including Shanghai Street Super, Su Super, Foshan West League, Chu Super, Guizhou Village Super, Yu Super, Dian Super, Northeast Super, Min Super, Chuan Super, Meng Super, and Xiang Super—have all joined the platform. Xiaohongshu says it’ll provide traffic boosts, content operations, and other support to help these local leagues build their own content and fan communities on the app.
Xiaohongshu will keep running sports content—that’s the signal the platform is sending as it reveals its next steps.
Strawberry noted that the World Cup has proven Xiaohongshu, as a diverse community, can handle high-intensity, long-duration world-class sports events. She affirmed, “Rest assured, this isn’t just a one-time investment—Xiaohongshu will definitely keep exploring professional sports rights going forward.”
With the World Cup already over halfway through, these numbers show Xiaohongshu has largely passed the World Cup capability test. But the bigger test lies in community growth.
Looking at the long-term plan, Xiaohongshu’s goal is to deepen a new category and drive broader community expansion—both in user scale and diversity.
This is a path Xiaohongshu has repeated several times over the past few years: from food content growth, to breaking out with trendy sports categories, to partnering with the Spring Festival Gala. The platform’s vision is crystalizing—from a female-focused lifestyle-sharing community to a universal platform that can embrace a wider range of interests.
But the challenge with sports categories, like the World Cup, is bigger than before—it seems to clash with Xiaohongshu’s apparent strengths. Can the platform balance its core user base with hardcore fans’ content preferences? How will it use everyday content, not just big events, to keep new users coming back? These are the real questions behind all the big talk.
