The Era When Everything Is Vibe: Why Xiaohongshu Is Buying the World Cup? — A Crossover with Flip Sports
Summary
- The real surprise in Xiaohongshu’s World Cup bid is not its move into sports, but its willingness to put a rumored RMB1B-plus rights fee on a one-shot test of its organizational capacity. 庄明浩 said Xiaohongshu probably hired Mbappé as a brand ambassador for the last World Cup; 华伦 also pointed to earlier small-scale rights tests involving the Bundesliga and other events. Rights are only the starting point: Xiaohongshu must build out programming, sponsorship, product, operations and community governance in a very short window, while Douyin reportedly deployed a team of more than 1,000 for the last tournament. 庄明浩’s read: the direction is not surprising, but the aggressiveness is.
- The investment looks more like a growth-stage platform swallowing a “megadose” than a clean standalone bet, and its success will be hard to disentangle from organic growth. Xiaohongshu has roughly 400M MAUs; 庄明浩 estimates its valuation may already be in the tens of billions of dollars and annual revenue in the tens of billions of RMB, making it one of the major content platforms still clearly on an upward trajectory. If the World Cup lifts DAU, MAU, time spent, retention and revenue, attribution becomes an “elevator push-up” problem. For early investors, 庄明浩 thinks another experiment of this kind is no longer that important: “Why not have some fun.” For a listed company, meanwhile, short-term share prices would mostly reflect sentiment.
- 华伦 believes this World Cup’s media center of gravity may shift away from full-match coverage toward remixes, memes, personalities and lifestyles. Migu has the traditional commentary roster of 詹俊, 张路 and 黄健翔. Even if 范志毅 is currently Xiaohongshu’s biggest name, the platform can generate distribution-ready material through 马宁 riffing on 韦世豪 memes, the 范志毅-style heckling 华伦 imagines, and Verstappen’s OOTD. Citing 仲卿’s deliberately extreme formulation, 华伦 argues that games, football and music are all becoming raw material for commentary and remixes: the meaning of the original work appears to be shrinking, while the surrounding conversation has more life.
- Recommendation algorithms now let generalist platforms meet most sports needs at “70 points,” leaving vertical communities to fight for “90-point” hardcore users. That creates a structural ceiling for Dongqiudi, Hupu and Zhiboba: general users and strong creators are moving to Bilibili, Xiaohongshu and Douyin, while the remaining traffic increasingly depends on flame wars, emotion and outbound conversion. Xiaohongshu’s entry, 华伦 argues, exposes the old communities’ predicament: their supposed foundation may have been reduced to “nothing but arguing.”
- Sports rights themselves are being restructured, because a platform can build World Cup events, conversations and remixes without buying the rights. 庄明浩 uses that point to push back against the one-way framing that “football needs Xiaohongshu, not Xiaohongshu the World Cup”: rights still matter for live broadcasts and related entitlements, but they are no longer the only ticket into the event. Douyin’s CBA operating and monetization experiment was not especially successful, which may have contributed to its decision to pass on this World Cup. If even World Cup and NBA rights eventually find no buyer, the market could move toward a CBA-style workaround—or, in an extreme case, leave CCTV to take over.
- Xiaohongshu’s key edge may be “human feel,” algorithmic distribution and community governance—not a more lavish commentary lineup than traditional platforms can offer. 华伦 worries that an influx of male fans could trigger a values clash with the existing user base. 庄明浩 thinks the “bros may simply meet one another” without a direct collision, with the real trouble potentially confined to livestream rooms. The same person may instinctively look for a fight on Hupu, then change how he speaks on a Xiaohongshu feed full of OOTD posts. Turning 马宁 into a fashion icon and 段暄 choosing Xiaohongshu for his Bundesliga return are both examples of how the setting changes the way a person is judged.
- If Xiaohongshu executes the 2026 World Cup well and retains a large cohort of users, the deepest damage may fall not on Migu but on Hupu, Dongqiudi and Zhiboba. Bilibili has taken a lighter route in through the official NBA account, team accounts and an event “station”; Xiaohongshu, still in an upcycle, is choosing to meet the event head-on. The disappearance of the old F1 community Hello F1 shows that even the most committed niche may not hold. 庄明浩 still believes football and the NBA could retain a core of diehards, but successful World Cup operations would “accelerate the speed of these communities’ extinction.”
Deep dive
1. Xiaohongshu’s Move into Sports Wasn’t Sudden; the Bet Size Was
庄明浩’s first reaction was “somewhat surprised,” but the surprise was mainly about the investment posture. He noted that Xiaohongshu probably hired Mbappé as a brand ambassador for the last World Cup, so sports was never entirely disconnected from its community.
In his view, the mainstream content landscape has already shifted from traditional long-form video sites to Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu and Bilibili. The 3 major long-form platforms would struggle to carry a World Cup-sized commitment, while Bilibili barely participated, leaving a limited field of potential buyers.
华伦 said Xiaohongshu also secured rights to the Bundesliga and other events this year, and likely tested the waters with the Women’s Asian Cup and other competitions. That suggests the basic workflow may not start from zero; the jump from the Bundesliga to the World Cup is a move from a category experiment straight into a mass-market event.
2. “RMB1B-Plus” Is Only the Admission Ticket; the Short Runway Is the Organizational Risk
Market rumors put the rights fee at “RMB1B-plus.” 庄明浩 stressed that this excludes programming and production, community content, advertising sales, page design and platform operations: “There are actually a great many things you have to coordinate and deliver in such a short time.”
Citing reports, 华伦 said Douyin assembled a team of more than 1,000 for the last World Cup. Xiaohongshu has long described its headcount externally as 1,000–9,999 employees. If a comparable pool of resources must be mobilized, the organizational pressure will be hard to miss.
Rights for this tournament were confirmed relatively close to kickoff, further compressing the preparation window. Smaller tests such as the Bundesliga can provide experience, but they are not equivalent to the intensity of a World Cup-wide conversation.
庄明浩 therefore does not view this as an ordinary procurement decision. It was a choice that only got “the hammer” after a notably more aggressive internal process. The real test is whether the company can proactively design and execute a large-scale content event.
3. Xiaohongshu Is Good at “Growing” Communities, but Repeatedly Struggles with Deliberate Assignments
庄明浩’s core description of Xiaohongshu is: “It’s something that was grown; it wasn’t something designed proactively.” Its early users, modes of expression, memes and taste resemble a process of selective cultivation, shaped jointly by time, accident and operations.
Xiaohongshu launched livestreaming in 2020. Given its discovery-led shopping, female-consumption base and brand tone, it appeared naturally suited to live commerce. But Taobao, Kuaishou and Douyin livestreaming were already mature, and Xiaohongshu could not simply compete on price. It had to actively decide which hosts to select, what to sell and how to present it.
Official promotion, the recruitment of off-platform streamers, and episodic successes from 董洁 and 张晓慧 all produced results, but none became a durable answer. Entertainment livestreaming was another deliberate assignment: whether to pursue it, whether to sign M S N, whether to let it grow organically or adopt another model could not be solved by natural growth.
The World Cup magnifies that weakness. Xiaohongshu cannot simply wait for users to discuss football; it must pre-design the livestreams, programming, monetization and governance boundaries. Its repeated failures to meet expectations when taking the initiative are one reason outsiders remain skeptical.
4. The Success Metrics Are Clear; Attribution Is Highly Subjective
From an investment perspective, 庄明浩’s core metrics remain DAU, MAU, time spent, retention and revenue. Xiaohongshu has roughly 400M MAUs, a valuation potentially in the tens of billions of dollars and annual revenue in the tens of billions of RMB. It is no longer an early-stage startup that needs one project to prove it can survive.
Early investors may already have made many times their money on paper, so Xiaohongshu spending on a World Cup experiment is, for them, “already not that important—why not have some fun.” If Xiaohongshu were a listed company, institutions and retail investors in the secondary market would express their sentiment through the short-term share price, but that would not necessarily represent the long-term outcome.
华伦 could not even remember Xiaohongshu ever sponsoring the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. 庄明浩 used that to illustrate how outside observers might conclude that “the money was poorly spent,” while internally the company can always find supporting data in user acquisition, reputation or ecosystem changes.
The larger problem is the growth baseline. Douyin’s user count and time spent have largely flattened, while long-form video is in decline and Xiaohongshu is still clearly growing. Whether growth during the World Cup comes from the project or from the platform itself is like “doing push-ups in an elevator”—difficult to separate.
5. Douyin’s World Cup Exit May Be Rational Retrenchment After the CBA Test
华伦 recalled that Douyin’s purchase of the CBA rights once shook the basketball world. For the platform, however, it may have been a manageable roll of the dice: the sports audience might not be large enough, and the test itself could determine whether to continue.
庄明浩 believes Douyin did use the CBA to test how traditional sports rights could be integrated with short-video operations, livestream commerce and downstream monetization. Judging by reputation and revenue, the results were “not especially ideal,” and the sports business reportedly underwent major changes.
These factors may not individually have determined Douyin’s decision to pass on this World Cup. Pricing and competition also mattered, but they “were certainly all in the mix.” Xiaohongshu has inherited not just the rights, but also the unresolved operating and monetization challenge that major platforms have yet to crack.
6. A Platform Can Cover the World Cup Without Buying the Rights; the Exclusive Ticket Is Losing Value
华伦 relayed a popular framing: “The World Cup needs Xiaohongshu; football needs Xiaohongshu, not Xiaohongshu the World Cup.” 庄明浩’s immediate response was: if Xiaohongshu does not buy the rights, can’t it still run World Cup events? Of course it can. Douyin can do the same.
His key qualification is that rights still matter for live broadcasts and related entitlements, but they no longer determine whether a platform can share in the event’s heat. Tournament topics, creator content, short video, search and community discussion can all be built outside the rights package.
The loosening is not limited to sports. During the pandemic, a Xu Zheng film originally slated for theatrical release was handed directly to Douyin for free streaming, showing how the relationship between film rights and short-video distribution was being renegotiated. The World Cup may be the last fortress of traditional tentpole rights.
庄明浩’s extreme test is this: if one day nobody is willing to buy even the World Cup, and matches have to rely on “buddies shouting into microphones while selling goods,” then the rights system will truly have been rewritten. He does not think that scenario is entirely impossible, because the CBA has already shown something similar.
7. The Full Match Appears to Have Been Demoted to Raw Material; Memes and Remixes Matter More
Migu’s announced “commentary dream team” still consists of familiar faces such as 詹俊, 张路 and 黄健翔. But 华伦’s reaction to the press conference was that it felt like a return to CCTV-5, while Xiaohongshu, whose biggest name at present may be 范志毅, still feels more nimble overall.
The distribution unit 华伦 imagines is not 范志毅 providing full commentary on a match. It is him creating a meme, mocking Mbappé as “not as good as I was in my Crystal Palace days.” 马宁 joining Xiaohongshu and playing with 韦世豪 memes already shows how the platform can turn a person into a personality asset that others can remix.
华伦 cited 仲卿’s deliberately extreme line: “Games are actually part of game criticism.” He believes football, games and music are all being deconstructed; the meaning of the original work “seems genuinely to have been made smaller,” while memes, commentary and peripheral distribution have more vitality.
华伦 contrasted this with World Cup advertising. A traditional Brazilian beer commercial still has Ronaldo and Ancelotti carrying the grand star-driven narrative. Lego simply starts assembling bricks, gradually builds Messi, and then has the Messi account publish it. The format is lighter, yet the observed distribution effect is better.
8. F1 Shows That New Users Consume the Lifestyle First
华伦 suggested looking directly at F1 on Xiaohongshu. Fans who followed the sport from the Schumacher era and today’s younger users, regardless of gender, differ completely in what they follow, how they speak and how they use the event to signal identity. “I just follow Verstappen’s OOTD. That’s fine.”
华伦 added that over the past 1–2 years, using Xiaoyuzhou as an example, more than half of the new podcasts that emerged were produced by women. Some racing podcasts explicitly identify themselves as “women-friendly.” Female racing fans who once spoke publicly were routinely asked, “Have you ever touched a car? Do you even understand it?” Lighter, richer content formats may give suppressed groups room to speak.
Xiaohongshu is not a women-only platform. 庄明浩 listed anime, animation, games, collectibles and 3C as already large categories. Their forms on Xiaohongshu differ from those on traditional forums, but “who says they have to be done in the traditional way?”
华伦 has noticed people around him naturally beginning to use Xiaohongshu to watch video this year. Its horizontal-video, long-form and high-bitrate features may attract users who would otherwise go to Bilibili or long-form video sites. The World Cup arrives just as this product form is still unsettled, turning it abruptly into a major test.
9. Recommendation Algorithms Let Generalist Platforms Partly Serve as Personal Sports Communities
庄明浩 returned to the logic behind his investment in Dongqiudi more than a decade ago: mobile internet would inevitably create a new generation of vertical communities for interests such as football, parenting and pets. Dongqiudi was a representative company from that wave of entrepreneurship.
Algorithms changed the premise. Someone who owns a pet or loves sports will see a substantial amount of pet or sports content on Douyin, Xiaohongshu and Bilibili. In roughly 70% of cases, generalist platforms can already cover roughly 70% of the sports needs those users once had.
Vertical platforms are therefore left serving the most hardcore users, who demand a “90-point” experience. But the more narrowly they focus on the core, the more they abandon the mass market, lowering both their user-scale and monetization ceilings. That is inherently at odds with venture capital’s demand that a company grow large and go public.
庄明浩 asks in succession: are there still independent communities for games, music, pets, or parenting? The answer is almost always no. Sports is one of the few categories that still resembles a fortress, and it too is being gradually eroded by the same algorithmic logic.
10. Once Vertical Communities Lose Their Creators, Arguments Take Over the Traffic Center
Dongqiudi creator 谢宇宁 posted his story of becoming unemployed in Beijing at 30 on Bilibili, where the follow-up discussion was also centered, rather than moving to Hupu. Basketball creator Terry Fair likewise uses Bilibili as his core platform, while Hupu users themselves leave comments saying they prefer watching him on Douyin or Bilibili.
华伦 said legacy sports communities sometimes cannot compete with generalist platforms and also actively alienate high-bar creators when expanding into “male-user platforms” or broader “interest platforms.” Ten years ago, Hupu’s basketball forum could accumulate long-form posts; today, the space for discussing deep content has visibly disappeared.
Traffic is ultimately sustained by people attacking one another, because “extreme emotion gets extreme feedback.” News comments on Hupu, Dongqiudi and other sports communities also funnel users toward Taobao, Meituan and even sports betting. What remains is not a small, beautiful niche, but increasingly extreme habits of consumption and expression.
That is why 华伦 believes Xiaohongshu’s entry exposes the old sports communities’ problem. Vertical platforms once claimed to host the most important discussions; now, quality content has flowed elsewhere, and their foundation may have been reduced to “nothing but arguing.”
11. The Real “Small and Beautiful” Is Shrinking from Platforms into Individuals and Podcasts
华伦 had assumed that after generalist platforms swallowed the mass market, vertical communities could at least retain something small and beautiful that users valued. 庄明浩’s rebuttal is worth keeping: what sports platforms actually retain is often a more extreme user base, not a better or tighter community.
He cited Gcores as an example. A small group can attract like-minded users through shared taste, personality and a definition of games, then sustain the team through podcasts, clothing and events as long as it does not lose money. But it cannot realistically be expected to grow into a platform 10 times larger.
The growth of podcasts in recent years has absorbed this overflow. Sports, F1, music and games still need long-form discussion that is “less short-video and less emotionally explosive,” which has given many former content editors a new outlet.
Xiaoyuzhou differs because it is subscription-based and has “no public square.” Users mostly listen to shows they have actively chosen and identify with, although its algorithm is also gradually expanding discovery. Forums, Tieba and media communities are all public squares, where loud and quiet voices inevitably compete.
12. Xiaohongshu’s “Human Feel” May Matter More Than Its Commentary Lineup
华伦 worries that the World Cup will bring a large male audience into a community with many female users, producing clashes between Hupu bros and Douban sisters. 庄明浩 thinks the “bros may simply meet one another” without a direct collision; the real trouble may be limited to livestream rooms.
华伦 took the point further: “The setting changes the person.” The same guy may open Hupu ready to pick a fight, then open Xiaohongshu and see everyone discussing OOTD, leaving him “too embarrassed to start one.” User habits are not fixed attributes; they are also shaped by the expressions visible around them.
华伦 uses “human feel” to distinguish platforms. Douyin has almost none, Weibo has completely lost it, while Xiaohongshu still has many ordinary people responding kindly to strangers’ housing problems and turning those answers into searchable guides. Moderation matters, but so does the community’s default posture.
马宁 can be transformed from a figure people debate into a fashion icon, with questions of right and wrong heavily pushed into the background. 段暄 returning to Xiaohongshu to broadcast the Bundesliga after his troubles also reflects a creator’s judgment about the comment environment. 庄明浩 believes the feedback would be entirely different on Weibo or Douyin.
13. A Growth-Stage Platform Taking a “Megadose” Could Rewrite the Endgame of Sports Internet
Bilibili has taken a softer route. The official NBA account and many teams have joined the platform, so basketball creators no longer need to prepare and switch between 2 versions of their content for Bilibili and YouTube. Bilibili has also built an NBA “station,” gradually adding classic games and official content instead of immediately buying the full rights package.
庄明浩 explains the difference through the capital cycle. Bilibili’s market cap rose from several billion dollars to roughly $50B, then fell back to roughly $7B, taking it through the boom, peak and trough. After buying 3 years of League of Legends World Championship rights, it now naturally favors a better cost-benefit approach. Xiaohongshu is still rising, so it can treat the World Cup as a “megadose”: “The body is young; it can take it.”
If Xiaohongshu succeeds and retains many World Cup users, 华伦 believes Hupu, Dongqiudi and Zhiboba will decline faster. China’s once-important racing community Hello F1 has already disappeared. One photographer, probably China’s first licensed female F1 photographer, still remembers people exchanging Hupu IDs at meetups around the Shanghai race more than a decade ago. 庄明浩 believes football and the NBA may ultimately be the only categories able to hold on to a base of diehards.
The longer-term rights endgame is similarly bleak. If Tencent does not renew the NBA next time and Douyin does not take it, China could face a vacuum, with CCTV eventually stepping in if no other player takes the rights. The platform company 庄明浩 works for owns a KPL club with a solid record, but has never considered buying KPL rights. 华伦 said he could not imagine how young people would look back 20 years later if the 2026 World Cup were their first time watching a full tournament. “There is no such if. Wait and watch the World Cup.”