People in China are watching the World Cup differently this time

BEIJING — Long gone are the days when catching World Cup soccer games on the go meant buying a portable mini television set.

Instead, consumers in China can just whip out their phones. Soccer is popular in China, even if the national team hasn’t qualified for the World Cup since 2002.

“We mostly watch on smartphones, very little on TV,” said Faye Jin. “The TV at home is basically not used. Maybe to watch some competitions we will turn on the TV at the last minute, but most of the time it’s on our phones.”

This year, Chinese social media company Xiaohongshu won the rights to stream the World Cup games 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 broadcast rights less than a month before the World Cup kicked off last week. The company runs China Central Television (CCTV), which has both mobile and smart TV apps that let subscribers watch matches and replays ad-free.

CNBC spot checks found that locals in Beijing are not as eager to head out to bars for World Cup games this year, and instead follow matches online, often at home.

The games this year tend to fall in the middle of the night or during morning working hours due to the 12-hour-plus time difference. Interviews are translated from the original Mandarin Chinese.

“If my friends are interested in the World Cup they will definitely watch at home,” said Xu Wang, who works at Absolut Bar in a tourist-heavy part of Beijing. “It’s hard to find a suitable place for people to gather at that time of night, especially because everyone is spread out across the city.”

The shift to mobile devices builds on a digital-first trend in China.

During the World Cup in 2022, China already accounted for nearly half of all hours of viewing on digital and social platforms globally, according to FIFA.

Widespread 5G connectivity and relatively low-priced roaming packages help. People in China already spend 40% of their daily mobile phone time watching videos, primarily on short-video apps such as ByteDance’s Douyin, according to QuestMobile.

To stay updated on the World Cup matches, Quan Zhao said he scrolls through Douyin, and only plans to watch the last few games in full. He’s not sure yet whether he will go out to do so.

That also reflects how tough it is for Xiaohongshu to capitalize on World Cup streaming to reach more users.

Douyin won streaming rights for the World Cup in 2022, when many people in China still faced Covid-19 restrictions on gathering and moving around. This time, Douyin is promoting a packed lineup of soccer commentators and creators, along with World Cup-themed AI special effects templates.

Douyin has more than 1 billion monthly active users, Questmobile data showed, while Xiaohongshu had 245.3 million as of March.

A shopping-focused version of Douyin ranked first among the top 10 downloaded apps on Apple’s China app store as of midday Monday.

CCTV’s app for streaming the World Cup ranked second, while China’s official sports betting app ranked sixth — and Xiaohongshu ranked ninth.

Chinese tech companies aren’t just focused on the domestic market. Tencent Cloud said Friday that two-thirds of official World Cup broadcasting platforms in Asia Pacific use the company’s services.

The company said it’s supporting match streaming in 16 regions, including Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Argentina — the largest territory for a World Cup ever covered by a Chinese cloud provider.