小红书 赌一把“世界杯”

This article centers on Xiaohongshu's RMB 1.7 billion deal to secure full multi-channel media broadcast rights for the 2026 FIFA World Cup across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, a key move for the platform to drive cross-demographic growth and advance commercialization. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Xiaohongshu's current growth status: The platform now has over 400 million monthly active users and more than 170 million daily active users, with daily active growth slowing notably after hitting the 150 million mark. With over 70% of its user base being female, the platform faces a skewed user structure and needs new stimulus to break through its growth ceiling.

2. Xiaohongshu's past audience expansion path and results: Starting from organically grown user content, the platform gradually upgraded product features and later expanded to offline interest-based events, which has delivered initial results. Mid-to-long form video consumption time has increased 43% year-over-year, and the platform’s anime/manga (ACG) user base has exceeded 100 million.

3. Core challenges ahead: An influx of new users risks diluting Xiaohongshu's original community identity. Balancing community content culture and commercial growth is the core issue Xiaohongshu needs to address through this World Cup campaign.

This article analyzes Xiaohongshu's strategic move of acquiring World Cup broadcast rights, offering actionable insights for brands' marketing and operations. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Consumption trends and marketing opportunities: Xiaohongshu has transformed into a lifestyle and interest-based community with an increasingly diversified user base. It already counts over 100 million users interested in football, and interaction volume for football content grew more than 100% year-over-year in 2025. The sports interest track offers significant room for user growth and marketing expansion.

2. Conversion upside opportunities: Xiaohongshu plans to build a closed full conversion loop that connects match viewing, product discovery and purchase. Referencing the previous Qatar World Cup, sales of fan merchandise on Douyin E-commerce grew 400% compared to pre-tournament levels. Sports-related brands can leverage this World Cup to launch content marketing and tap conversion from new users.

3. Benefits of platform cooperation: Xiaohongshu has launched its "Million Leap Program" to support high-quality merchants, and improved the revenue sharing mechanism for video creators on its Dandelion influencer marketing platform. Brand invitation volume on Dandelion grew 34% year-over-year last year, marking a more mature brand collaboration ecosystem.

This article discloses Xiaohongshu's latest development direction and policy updates, providing useful references for existing and prospective sellers on the platform. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. New volume growth opportunities: Xiaohongshu's core goal in acquiring the World Cup broadcast rights is to attract more male users and optimize its user structure. The platform has already built a sizeable base of sports and male-interest users, opening a new growth window for male-skewed categories such as sporting goods and consumer electronics. Sellers can start content seeding for these tracks in advance.

2. Latest platform policy updates: Xiaohongshu has terminated its "Million Zero Commission" program and launched the "Million Leap Program", which prioritizes supporting merchants offering high-quality, high-service, reasonably priced goods. It has also improved creator content revenue sharing mechanisms, so compliant, high-quality sellers can access greater platform traffic support.

3. Risk warnings: Xiaohongshu currently faces the challenge of balancing its original community identity after content expansion, and an influx of new users could bring volatility to its content ecosystem. Sellers need to create content that aligns with the platform’s native community culture, and avoid non-compliant marketing practices that would hurt their traffic access.

Xiaohongshu's cross-demographic expansion strategy brings new business opportunities and digital transformation insights for consumer goods factories. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Adjustments to product development and design: Xiaohongshu is rapidly expanding into multiple emerging interest verticals including sports, consumer electronics and ACG, with both football and ACG user bases exceeding 100 million. Consumer demand for corresponding categories is growing quickly. Factories can adjust their R&D and design directions to cater to these interest communities, and develop products tailored for these niche groups.

2. New business collaboration opportunities: Xiaohongshu is building out its in-platform e-commerce conversion loop and prioritizes supporting high-quality goods merchants. Factories can directly partner with Xiaohongshu to build their own direct-to-consumer brands, realize direct monetization through content seeding, cut out intermediate links and boost profit margins.

3. Digital transformation insights: Xiaohongshu’s growth proves that interest-based communities have become a new source of traffic. Factories can leverage the platform's interest tags to precisely target their core users, adopt flexible manufacturing to match the personalized needs of different community groups, and improve inventory turnover efficiency.

Xiaohongshu's accelerated expansion via acquiring World Cup broadcast rights reveals the latest trends in the content community industry, and clarifies client pain points and business directions for service providers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trends: Leading content community platforms are all transitioning from niche vertical discovery platforms to full-category interest-based communities. They generally need to expand into diversified content formats integrating text, images, short video, live streaming and offline events, leading to rapidly growing demand for professional third-party services.

2. Core client pain points: For platforms, the most pressing pain point is balancing community identity and commercialization after content expansion: how to retain users across both existing and new interest communities and convert new users. For brands, the core challenge is how to efficiently reach users in emerging interest communities and complete scenario-based product discovery and conversion.

3. New business directions: Service providers can develop refined community operation tools tailored to platform needs, helping platforms with content categorization and user management across different interest groups. They can also launch vertical content marketing services for emerging tracks such as sports and ACG to meet brand needs, connecting brands with niche influencers to deliver campaigns that achieve both branding and performance goals.

Xiaohongshu’s years of audience expansion experience and its World Cup strategic move offer valuable references and risk warnings for peer content platforms. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. A proven expansion path: After years of trial and error, Xiaohongshu developed an expansion framework of "organic content growth + product feature upgrade + offline interest collaboration", which has delivered verified initial results: mid-to-long form video consumption grew 43% year-over-year, and the ACG user base exceeds 100 million. This framework can serve as a reference for peer platforms.

2. A viable approach to balancing community and commercialization: Xiaohongshu uses a dual mechanism of passive recommendation + active search: it attracts new users via interest-based recommendations and meets the personalized needs of existing users via search, effectively easing tensions caused by content expansion. It also balances content culture and revenue by supporting high-quality merchants and building out a full conversion loop.

3. Risks to avoid: Acquiring top-tier sports IP requires massive capital investment with uncertain short-term returns. Blind content expansion can dilute a platform's original community identity, and mishandling can lead to churn among both new and existing users. Platforms should build a refined community operation mechanism before expanding, rather than pursuing reckless growth.

This article sorts out Xiaohongshu's latest development strategy, providing new materials and directions for content community industry research. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. New industry development trends: Leading content community platforms have generally entered a stage of cross-demographic expansion, transitioning from original vertical discovery platforms to comprehensive interest-based communities. They are increasingly acquiring top-tier IP to expand their content boundaries and break through user growth ceilings, leading to increasingly blurred content boundaries between platforms and the industry entering a new phase of competition.

2. New common problems for the industry: In the process of expansion, content platforms universally face a tension between community content identity and commercial development. How to balance the needs of new and existing users after content expansion, and preserve core competitiveness while growing scale, is a new common problem the industry needs to solve.

3. New materials for business model research: Xiaohongshu is exploring a new closed loop of "top-tier IP content + interest-based product discovery + e-commerce conversion". It is also improving creator incentives by adopting ad revenue sharing models similar to overseas platforms, and shifting merchant support from traffic subsidies to prioritizing high-quality goods. These new explorations hold high research value for studying commercialization paths of content communities.