A sports-themed exhibition at a shopping mall in Beijing ahead of the start of the World Cup on June 11, 2026.
CNBC | Yin Hon Chow
Beijing — Gone are the days when watching World Cup soccer matches on the go meant buying a small portable television.
Instead, Chinese consumers can simply pull out their phones. Soccer is popular in China, even though the national team has not qualified for the World Cup since 2002.
“Most of the time we watch on smartphones, less on TV,” said Faye Jin. “Home TV is not really used. Maybe to watch some competitions we will turn it on at the last minute, but most of the time it is on our phones.”
This year, Chinese social media company Xiaohongshu won the rights to broadcast World Cup matches for free to all users. The app, also called Little Red Book, is sometimes compared to Meta’s Instagram.
Xiaohongshu’s deal is a strategic partnership with state-owned China Media Group, which sealed the broadcast rights less than a month before the World Cup kicked off last week. The company operates China Central Television (CCTV), which has both mobile TV and smart TV apps that allow subscribers to watch matches and replays without ads.
CNBC’s checks found that locals in Beijing are less willing to go to pubs for World Cup games this year, and are instead following matches online, often at home.
This year’s games usually fall in the middle of the night or during the morning working hours due to the time difference of 12 hours or more. Interviews are translated from Mandarin Chinese.
“If my friends are interested in the World Cup, they will definitely watch it at home,” said Xu Wang, who works at Absolut Bar in a busy area of Beijing. “It’s difficult to find a suitable place for people to gather at that time of night, especially because everyone is spread out all over the city.”
The shift to mobile devices builds on the digital-first trend in China.
By the time of the World Cup in 2022, China has already accounted for almost half of all viewing hours on digital and social media worldwide, according to FIFA.
Widespread 5G connectivity and low-cost roaming packages help. Chinese people already spend 40% of their mobile time watching videos, especially on short video apps like ByteDance’s Douyin, according to QuestMobile.
In order to stay informed about the World Cup games, Quan Zhao said that he is investigating in Douyin, and he plans to watch the last few games in full. He is not sure if he will go out and do so.
That also shows how difficult it is for Xiaohongshu to monetize the World Cup broadcast to reach more users.
Douyin won the rights to broadcast the World Cup in 2022, when many people in China are still facing Covid-19 restrictions on gatherings and travel. This time, Douyin is promoting a full line-up of football commentators and creators, as well as World Cup-themed AI special effects templates.
Douyin has more than 1 billion active users, Questmobile data showed, while Xiaohongshu had 245.3 million as of March.
The shopping-oriented version of Douyin ranked first among the top 10 downloaded apps on Apple’s app store in China as of midday Monday.
CCTV’s World Cup streaming app ranked second, while China’s official sports betting app ranked sixth — and Xiaohongshu ranked ninth.
Chinese technology companies are not just focused on the domestic market. Tencent Cloud said on Friday that two-thirds of official World Cup broadcast platforms in Asia Pacific use the company’s services.
The company said it supports broadcasts of the game in 16 regions, including Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Argentina – the largest World Cup area ever covered by the Chinese cloud provider.
