News Reporter |
News Editor | Liu Fangyuan
The World Cup group stage is behind us, and Xiaohongshu is already showing off its mid-tournament report card.
From the live-streaming numbers alone, the World Cup is constantly rewriting Xiaohongshu’s own history books. On July 2, the platform dropped its Group Stage Viewing Report, and the stats are head-turning: total live watch time during the group phase shot up 90 times compared to pre-tournament levels, live viewership jumped 40 times, and World Cup plus football-related content racked up a staggering 28.2 billion impressions.
According to Xiaohongshu’s own findings, 71% of viewers chose the app because the streams are free and skip pre-roll ads, while 61% credited the ultra-HD picture quality for keeping them glued to the screen.
Over the past month, Xiaohongshu has been pulling out all the stops around the World Cup, both on the product side and in content operations. For the first time in its history, the app added a dedicated first-level tab for a single event—the “World Cup” section now sits right next to “Following” and “Explore.” NUPIAO also noticed that over the past week, a live match scoreboard has been persistently pinned at the bottom of the app.
On the content front, the strategy isn’t just about the tournament itself; it’s about spinning the World Cup into a much wider sports and lifestyle conversation. Xiaohongshu is fueling a wave of remix culture, blending its own native content with match-day moments. Since kick-off, the platform has generated 6,253 World Cup-related trending topics. And it gets more creative: AI art, painting, bead crafts, and knitting have all collided with the World Cup, while lifestyle posts like “pet World Cup” and fan-made World Cup anthems bubbled up alongside the tournament. Even the in-app shopping section got a “Fan Market” makeover.
This is classic Xiaohongshu playbook territory—the same logic that works for fashion, outdoor adventures, and food. A source familiar with the matter told NUPIAO that the goal is to wrap World Cup hot topics and niche interests around a much broader audience, so that the mashup of football and lifestyle sparks even more user-generated content, ultimately converting the influx of new users into sticky community members.
Scale and fresh faces—that’s the bigger prize Xiaohongshu is chasing beyond the tournament itself.
NUPIAO previously reported that after securing the World Cup streaming rights, Xiaohongshu’s ambition went far beyond “just running a good World Cup.” On one hand, the platform wants to use World Cup live streams to catch up on daily active user numbers; on the other, it’s a golden ticket to attract a more diverse crowd. Xiaohongshu’s community head, Paru, has said that landing the World Cup rights marks a major step in the platform’s sports content roadmap, and the hope is that this mega IP will pull in a much broader range of users.
Judging by male engagement, the results are already visible. The report highlights that the World Cup has significantly expanded the ecosystem of football-related UGC on Xiaohongshu. Since the tournament started, the average daily volume of football content has jumped tenfold compared to May. What’s particularly eye-catching is that the share of male viewers has been climbing steadily, even surpassing 70% for some matches.
But the numbers so far may not fully live up to Xiaohongshu’s sky-high expectations.
One challenge is whether the World Cup buzz can deliver an equal return on the platform’s massive investment. This year, “cooling down” has become a bit of a buzzword for the World Cup in China’s social media landscape. A report by third-party data firm MoonFox shows that during the peak social media usage hours on the opening day of the 2022 World Cup, the top 10 trending topics on Weibo were all World Cup-related; for the 2026 edition, only 4 of the top 10 were about the tournament in the same time window.
Beyond the short-term spikes, there’s a much longer-term test. Live-streaming traffic peaks heavily depend on the match schedule and celebrity guests. Keeping users engaged during off-peak hours isn’t just about slick operations—it comes down to how naturally the World Cup blends with Xiaohongshu’s core vibe.
In past years, when running sports categories, Xiaohongshu has already been mindful of striking a balance between content and its predominantly female user base. For example, many conversations on the platform revolve around women’s football and grassroots street football, creating a clear distinction from other platforms. But if Xiaohongshu wants to truly retain those “event-driven” users, it still has to work through a community culture challenge—and that remains the core question in whether this “mainstream breakout” play can succeed.
