People in China are watching the World Cup differently this time

BEIJING — Long gone are the days when watching World Cup football matches on the go meant buying a computer. portable mini television set.

Instead, consumers in China can pull out their phones. Football is popular in China despite the national team not qualified for World Cup since 2002.

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

This year, Chinese social media company Xiaohongshu won the rights. Stream World Cup matches free to all users. Also called the Little Red Book, the app is sometimes compared to Meta’s Instagram.

Xiaohongshu’s deal is a strategic partnership with state-owned China Media Group signing broadcast rights. less than a month Last week before the World Cup started. The company operates China Central Television (CCTV), which has both mobile and smart TV apps that allow subscribers to watch matches and replays ad-free.

CNBC’s spot checks found that locals in Beijing aren’t as keen on going to bars for World Cup games this year and are instead following the games online, often in their own homes.

This year’s matches usually fall at midnight or during morning work hours due to the more than 12-hour time difference. The interviews have been translated from the original 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 tourist-heavy area of ​​Beijing. “It’s hard to find a suitable place for people to gather at that time of night, especially since everyone is scattered all over the city.”

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

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

Widespread 5G connection and relatively low-priced roaming packages help. People in China are already spending 40% of daily mobile phone time is spent watching videosPrimarily on short video apps like ByteDance’s Douyin, according to QuestMobile.

Quan Zhao said he was browsing Douyin to stay up to date on World Cup matches and only planned to watch the last few matches in full. He’s not sure yet if he’ll go out to do it.

This also reflects how difficult it was for Xiaohongshu to leverage World Cup coverage to reach more users.

Douyin won Broadcast rights for the World Cup in 2022, when many people in China still face Covid-19 restrictions on gathering and movement. This time Douyin is promoting an advertisement a staff of football commentators and creators, as well as World Cup-themed AI special effects templates.

Owned by Douyin More than 1 billion monthly active usersQuestmobile data showed that Xiaohongshu had 245.3 million as of March.

The shopping-focused version of Douyin ranked first among the 10 most downloaded apps on Apple’s Chinese app store as of noon Monday.

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

Chinese technology companies do not focus only on the domestic market. Tencent Cloud said on Friday: Two-thirds of official World Cup broadcast platforms in Asia Pacific Use the company’s services.

The company said it supports match broadcasting in 16 regions, including Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Argentina; This is the largest region a Chinese cloud provider has ever covered for the World Cup.