A billion-dollar gamble on the World Cup: Did Xiaohongshu win?

Zebra Consumption | Ren Jianxin

The 39-day USA-Canada-Mexico World Cup has come to a close, with Spain lifting the Jules Rimet Trophy once again after a 16-year hiatus. In China, Xiaohongshu's billion-dollar gamble on the World Cup is now reaching a stage for reviewing its results.

For Xiaohongshu, placing heavy bets on top-tier global sports IPs is not merely short-term traffic marketing; it aims to break out of the comfort zone of "种草" (product recommendation), shatter long-standing user silos, and overcome growth and commercialization ceilings.

Speaking purely in business terms, within the match cycle, Xiaohongshu offered free viewing and restrained advertising, which may not have yielded immediate profits on paper. However, it achieved 阶段性 (phased) success in structurally breaking through user demographics.

Looking at the long term, whether Xiaohongshu can leverage these sports events to break through the bottleneck of its platform's commercial value requires sustained investment and longer observation.

Short-Term Ledger: Likely Not Yet Breakeven

During the USA-Canada-Mexico World Cup, many Chinese fans, especially non-hardcore ones, watched matches on Xiaohongshu.

Why say this? Veteran fans, accustomed to following European leagues, already have sports memberships on most major platforms as standard. They have formed fixed viewing habits and even have high demands for live commentary. Therefore, during this World Cup, they had no need to switch to Xiaohongshu just for free content.

According to media reports, Xiaohongshu spent billions to secure the live broadcasting rights for the USA-Canada-Mexico World Cup, and with other resource allocations, the total cost was even higher.

However, unlike traditional sports broadcasting platforms, Xiaohongshu set no barriers for viewing: no membership purchase required, no ads to unlock content. Fixed commercial ads from Yili, BYD, and Alienware electrolyte water only appeared during breaks or halftime, without disrupting the continuity of the viewing experience. For many fans, Xiaohongshu provided a "pure enjoyment version" of the World Cup.

Precisely because of this, to some extent, it limited Xiaohongshu's revenue volume during the World Cup period.

Market analysts note that due to time zone differences, most major matches of this World Cup were broadcast at early morning Beijing time, which was not very friendly to Chinese fans and significantly impacted the commercial value of the event in China.

Xiaohongshu was also extremely restrained with ads, making it unlikely to cover its various investments in the World Cup solely through ad revenue generated during the event.

Of course, Xiaohongshu's heavy investment in the World Cup was not about winning or losing on a single event's commercial basis, but rather aiming for the long term to achieve user and platform value breakthroughs, ultimately securing stable commercial growth.

Mid-Term View: Breaking Silos

For a long time, a single-user structure and entrenched silos have been a major bottleneck for Xiaohongshu's commercialization.

Data from Guotai Haitong Securities shows that in 2018, female users accounted for nearly 90% of Xiaohongshu's user base. This extremely imbalanced structure led to the platform being long labeled as a "female product recommendation community," limiting ad categories, consumption scenarios, and capital market valuation logic.

After years of operation, the platform's user structure has improved significantly. According to institutional data, as of October 2025, the proportion of active male users on Xiaohongshu rose to 35.8%. However, the user structure remains somewhat unbalanced, and silo barriers still exist.

This World Cup was viewed by Xiaohongshu as a powerful catalyst for breaking these silos.

From data disclosed by Xiaohongshu itself, the user breakout during the event was basically achieved.

On the first day of the tournament, the number of concurrent viewers for live streams surged 55 times compared to pre-event levels, breaking historical peaks. In the three days leading up to the start, fans generated 90 million interactions in live streams. By July 10, the platform had seen 28.2 billion exposures of football-related content, 14 million football-related notes, and 1,640 grassroots football accounts.

The traffic explosion from the World Cup caused significant changes in Xiaohongshu's user structure. A large influx of hardcore fans and male users interacting centrally greatly balanced the gender ratio, giving Xiaohongshu its first true foundation as a comprehensive interest community for all people.

Guotai Haitong Securities pointed out that Xiaohongshu's current ad load rate is only around 10%, far below industry leaders, leaving considerable room for commercial potential. Its current ad revenue is mainly contributed by female consumer categories such as cosmetics, clothing, shoes, hats, and maternal/infant products, while categories 偏向 male users like automobiles, 3C electronics, and beverages are severely underdeveloped.

The user breakout and scenario expansion achieved in this World Cup lay the groundwork for subsequent ad upgrades, continuous entry of high-ticket brands, and accelerated commercialization.

Long-Term Outlook: The Test Has Just Begun

Although the World Cup has ended, the test for Xiaohongshu has only just begun.

In fact, before the USA-Canada-Mexico World Cup, Xiaohongshu had already begun laying out its sports content strategy.

At the 2022 Qatar World Cup, Xiaohongshu exclusively signed legends like Simeone, Mourinho, and Zidane to join the platform, posting notes and doing live streams, which can be considered a trial run for major sports events;

At the 2024 European Championship, Xiaohongshu invited Mbappé as a spokesperson. The French-style "Little Red Pig" became an internet meme, sparking massive secondary creation;

For the 2025-26 Bundesliga season, Xiaohongshu reached a copyright cooperation agreement with the official Bundesliga, marking an important exploration and attempt in the football field for the platform.

Even so, due to insufficient accumulation of event resources, Xiaohongshu had not yet formed a fixed viewing atmosphere among users. It was only after spending heavily to secure the rights for the USA-Canada-Mexico World Cup that it truly ushered in a breakthrough in the sports sector.

It needs to be pointed out that for Xiaohongshu, the ultimate value of the sky-high investment in the World Cup does not lie in the 39 days of event 狂欢 (carnival), but in whether the sudden influx of traffic during the matches can be retained long-term.

This is precisely the biggest challenge facing Xiaohongshu. The newly added male users' core demands focused on free HD viewing and event content consumption, not on being active native community users.

After the event hype subsides, the activity level of this incremental user group will naturally decline. Whether the massive short-term influx of traffic can convert into normalized community users and solidify the male user base remains unverified for now.

Although there are still "City Super Leagues" in multiple provinces and cities joining Xiaohongshu after the World Cup, these grassroots events lack sufficient appeal to hardcore fans and have limited user mobilization power, making it difficult to sustain the content heat of the World Cup.

Another point to note is that with the influx of a large amount of hardcore sports content and male users, will it dilute Xiaohongshu's original lightweight, lifestyle-oriented atmosphere, leading to insufficient "种草" (recommendation) density?

Additionally, in the past, Xiaohongshu primarily enriched its platform content ecosystem through UGC, achieving great results with little effort. However, sports event copyrights generally require heavy investment. As investment in this area increases, it will undoubtedly put pressure on the platform's profitability.

Returning to the core question of this article: Did Xiaohongshu win or lose this billion-dollar gamble?

From a short-term commercial operations perspective, it may not have broken even temporarily; looking at the mid-term, this was a costly but strategically valuable breakthrough; looking at the long term, the verdict is still undecided.