Watching China from the sidelines of the World Cup

The 2026 FIFA World Cup, which kicked off on June 12 (Beijing time), is historic in multiple respects. It is the first to be jointly hosted by three countries; the first to feature 48 national teams; and it features 104 matches — 40 more than the Qatar 2022 edition — over a span of nearly 40 days.

As the most influential global sporting spectacle, the World Cup is, in essence, a vast transnational marketplace. It encompasses both a business-to-consumer consumption market driven by fan viewer-ship, and a business-to-business market of intangible asset transactions — most notably broadcasting rights and sponsorship deals that are repeatedly packaged, traded and monetized across multiple layers.

Behind the behavior of each market participant lies a distinct decision-making logic shaped by broader economic, technological, cultural and social conditions. In this sense, the World Cup is not only a festival for global soccer fans; it also functions as a valuable lens through which national development can be observed.

This is particularly true for China, a rapidly evolving market where socioeconomic change becomes especially visible across each four-year World Cup cycle. As the saying goes, "the scenery remains the same, but the people change". The World Cup may be the same tournament, but the audience and the corporate actors surrounding it are no longer what they once were.

Although the Chinese men's national soccer team has not qualified for the FIFA World Cup since 2002, that has not dampened the enthusiasm of Chinese audiences or businesses. Yet in this year's edition of the World Cup, despite a series of institutional and format innovations, the tournament has not generated the anticipated surge in consumer enthusiasm.

Public sentiment surrounding negotiations between China Media Group and FIFA over broadcasting rights offered an early signal of this shift.

The first change has been a gradual "demystification" of international sports organizations and premier global events. In recent years, sustained economic growth in China, breakthroughs in critical technologies, and progress in overcoming key bottlenecks have significantly strengthened public confidence. Against this backdrop, public perception of international institutions and mega-events has become less reverential.

The second change is the emergence of what may be described as "consumer awakening". In the digital economy, audiences are increasingly aware that they are not merely buyers of sports entertainment products; they are also an integral component of the intangible asset value underpinning these events.

Fan attention and traffic form the foundation of broadcasting rights, sponsorship value and associated commercial monetization. A widely circulated comment on social media captures this sentiment succinctly: "Without over a billion viewers, their advertising slots are meaningless. They should be paying us to broadcast their content." This reflects a broader shift in perceived value distribution within digital attention economies.

The third change comes from the evolving supply-demand dynamics within the domestic sports market. As China's sports industry expands rapidly, a growing number of alternative competitions — from the Village Super League (Cun Chao) in Guizhou to regional leagues such as the Jiangsu Super League (Suchao), and various northeastern competitions — have emerged and gained popularity. Soccer-related consumption is thus no longer monopolized by the World Cup.

While these domestic leagues may not match the technical level of elite international soccer, they are deeply embedded in local communities and closely integrated with regional culture, tourism and service economies. They generate strong emotional value for audiences and have developed a distinctive and resilient form of sports economy with clear Chinese characteristics.

The evolution of sports broadcasting ecosystems is equally revealing. It not only reflects the rapid development of media industries in the digital economy, but also expands the boundaries of intangible asset value and diversifies its monetization pathways.

In China, World Cup broadcasting has traditionally followed a "centralized acquisition plus domestic platform distribution" model led by CMG. A brief historical review shows that during the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, CMG first introduced sublicensing of new media broadcasting rights. This marked a structural shift: audiences began moving from a "primary screen" viewing model toward a "secondary screen" distribution system.

Since then, the secondary screen ecosystem has evolved rapidly. In 2018, sublicensing partners included Migu and Youku, both long-form video platforms. By the 2022 Qatar World Cup, rights holders included Migu and Douyin, the latter representing a hybrid platform integrating short video, social networking, and e-commerce functions. Douyin's entry into the broadcasting ecosystem therefore attracted significant attention at the time.

Different platforms have operationalized broadcasting rights in distinct ways, effectively creating differentiated consumption products for viewers. Migu, for instance, has consistently focused on delivering professional-grade sports broadcasting experiences, assembling elite commentary teams to meet the needs of core soccer audiences.

By contrast, Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, which obtained broadcasting-related rights for the first time, emphasized the construction of an online fan community rather than traditional commentary depth or broadcast fidelity. Its value proposition lies in the "community space" — featuring former professional players in interactive live commentary, prediction games and entertainment-oriented discussions. Officially compliant short clips and user-generated interpretations of match footage circulate continuously across posts and videos on the app, extending the content's life cycle.

This transformation of the broadcasting ecosystem signals a profound shift in how intangible assets — particularly broadcasting rights — generate value. In the earlier era dominated by long-form "first screen" and "second screen" models, monetization relied primarily on paid viewing and embedded advertising.

However, with the entry of social media and e-commerce platforms, short-form derivative content based on match footage has proliferated at scale. Multiple actors across digital ecosystems have become co-creators of sports-related content. Advertising itself has become embedded within algorithmic feeds and commercial platforms, generating new monetization structures.

In this sense, the rise of social media and e-commerce platforms mirrors the earlier disruption brought by internet media — once again expanding the value realization space of broadcasting rights and amplifying their economic significance.

The World Cup will continue, but as the saying goes, "the World Cup changes, while China's pace remains constant". Each tournament functions as a temporal marker, revealing China's broader trajectory of socioeconomic transformation along a global timeline.

And so, while we watch world-class soccer unfold on the pitch, we are also — perhaps more subtly — witnessing a parallel narrative: the evolving story of China itself.

The author is the director of the Sports Economics Research Center at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.