01 The Most Expensive World Cup in History Only Douyin Secures Broadcast Rights Just after Double 11, Douyin welcomed another traffic feast. Five months ago, China Media Group and Douyin Group jointly held a cloud release event, announcing that Douyin Group would be the rights-holding broadcaster for the 2022 Qatar World Cup and a strategic partner for live streaming with China Media Group. The World Cup officially kicks off on November 21, and in the entire short-video industry, only Douyin has obtained the broadcast rights. What this means needs no elaboration. Notably, the entity securing the rights is Douyin Group, indicating that beyond the Douyin app, Toutiao, Xigua Video, and even Dongchedi—a series of Douyin products—have all received World Cup authorization. For a long time, long-video platforms were the main players in sports copyright battles, but in recent years, with the rise of short videos and their nationwide popularity, the competition for sports copyrights has increasingly become the domain of short-video platforms. From last year's Tokyo Olympics to this year's Beijing Winter Olympics, and even common sports events like the NBA, CBA, European Championship, and Copa America, these have all become focal points of competition among short-video platforms like Kuaishou, Douyin, and WeChat Channels. Why do Douyin and Kuaishou compete for this market? The reason is simply traffic. Take the Olympics as an example: According to the "2021 Kuaishou Sports Data Report," during the Tokyo Olympics, the total playback of Olympic-related works and topic videos on the Kuaishou platform reached 73 billion views, with total interactions within the app reaching 6.06 billion. Currently, the World Cup hasn't started yet, but on the Douyin platform, the playback count for World Cup-related topics has already reached an astonishing 17.52 billion, indicating extraordinary popularity. Notably, Douyin has launched a "World Cup" special page, offering full-match, 4K ultra-high-definition free live streaming. In addition to match broadcasts, it has introduced various interactive activities, commentary programs, and other formats. The Douyin app icon has also been recently changed to "World Cup Live" with a small football icon. Clearly, Douyin is well-prepared for this grand event. From various sources, this World Cup is set to be another "history-making" global event. Qatar, with a population of just 2.8 million, has invested approximately $220 billion in this World Cup, making it the "most expensive World Cup in history." In comparison, the 2018 Russia World Cup cost $11.6 billion, and the 2014 Brazil World Cup cost $15 billion. Not only are costs high, but the prize money also sets a record, becoming the highest in World Cup history. The total prize pool is $440 million, with the champion receiving $42 million, the runner-up $30 million, and third place $27 million. Every participating team receives a $1.5 million participation fee. To date, the Qatar World Cup has sold over 3 million tickets. In the domestic short-video industry, only Douyin has secured the broadcast rights for the highly anticipated football World Cup. Douyin is likely to be the biggest winner, but the platform clearly doesn't view the World Cup merely as a "traffic feast."
02 Douyin's Ambitions Revealed Leveraging the World Cup to Link Multiple Businesses We are mentally prepared for the World Cup's popularity, but Douyin's preparations are more comprehensive than we imagined. First, the quadrennial World Cup is on par with the Olympics, and we can even say it's the only event that rivals the Summer Olympics in popularity. Behind this immense popularity lies "quality content" that is hard to come by, which aligns perfectly with the short-video industry's competition for excellent content creators. To fully tap into the World Cup's quality content, Douyin has invited numerous guests to participate in match commentary, including former national team player Sun Jihai, Golden Boot winner Li Yi, and current men's football player Wu Lei. They will interpret matches for users through Douyin's live commentary rooms. Beyond commentary, Douyin has launched multiple derivative programs, such as "DOU Comes to the World Cup," "Football Understanding Conference," and "Understanding the World Cup in One Minute." There's also a nationwide content solicitation activity called "Football Partners," which, as of November 12, had received submissions from 20,000 creators under the main topic, with over 2 billion views. Second, beyond deeply mining quality content from the World Cup, Douyin is also connecting the World Cup with its local life services, thanks to its business layout across multiple sectors. As we all know, watching football goes hand in hand with beer and food. Influenced by the World Cup's popularity, some beer stocks continued their gains from the previous day, with listed companies like Budweiser APAC, San Miguel Brewery Hong Kong, Tsingtao Brewery, and China Resources Beer collectively surging. As the broadcast host, Douyin launched the "Heartbeat Viewing Season" activity as early as October, partnering with tens of thousands of merchants nationwide, covering all categories of life services including dining, travel, and leisure, using the World Cup hotspot to create a major consumption node. Specifically, participating brands include Huang Shang Huang, DQ, COSTA, Nayuki Tea, Tao Tao Ju, Tiger Head Bureau, as well as Atlantis Hotel, McDonald's, Helens, and Haidilao—major names in local life services. It's clear that the popularity brought by a World Cup is far more than just traffic; Douyin is leveraging local life services, aiming to expand the "Heartbeat Viewing Season" and establish closer connections with consumers. But it doesn't end there; Douyin's "one stone" is not just about "two birds." Beyond content deepening and local life linkage, besides the Douyin app, the app covers of Toutiao and Xigua Video have also been changed to the exclusive "World Cup Live" icon. It's evident that Douyin's content mining is not limited to short videos; it also links with text-based news and medium-to-long video fields. Not only content, but searching for World Cup-related products on the aforementioned three apps also shows hot-selling e-commerce items. For example, the Douyin "Burning Goods Season" activity and officially licensed World Cup products are all contributing to Douyin's e-commerce closed loop. Achieving content and e-commerce closed loops within the group's apps has become a key point. In summary, the World Cup not only brings visible popularity to Douyin but also provides a wealth of quality content, enabling connections with local services, and more importantly, further integrating Douyin Group's content and e-commerce closed loops. Eating one fish in multiple ways, killing multiple birds with one stone—Douyin's ambitions go far beyond traffic.
03 Douyin Without Boundaries Compared to analyzing Douyin's ambitions, a visible trend is intensifying in the industry: Douyin's borderless expansion. Those familiar with sports content know that platforms like Kuaishou and Channels have never stopped competing for sports copyrights. In 2020, Kuaishou reached content cooperation agreements with the NFL, CBA, and World Snooker events. In June 2021, Kuaishou secured the broadcast rights and short-video secondary creation rights for the Tokyo Olympics and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, holding the "Double Olympics" and briefly surging to the forefront of the video track. Meanwhile, WeChat Channels, at the beginning of this year, tested a paid model for sports content live streaming. The first paid live room on Channels was for Tencent NBA, featuring NBA regular season games. Users could watch for free for 3 minutes, after which they needed to pay 90 WeChat Beans to continue. In monetary terms, Apple users pay about 13 yuan, while Android users pay 9 yuan. Several platforms have been closely competing in sports event exploration and competition. This time, Douyin got a head start in securing the World Cup broadcast rights, taking a leading position in the copyright battle, and it's likely to maintain its lead in platform popularity during the event. And Douyin, without boundaries, continues to open up its capabilities. In July, Douyin Group and iQiyi officially reached a cooperation. Douyin Group's official account announced that the two parties would explore secondary creation and promotion of long-video content, promoting win-win cooperation between long and short video platforms. In August, Douyin announced a partnership with Ele.me, stating they would jointly explore new scenario upgrades for local life services, deeply connecting merchants and consumers through quality content, rich products, and efficient logistics. In September, Douyin announced the launch of the Douyin Open Platform, which, based on Douyin series products and using Douyin mini-programs as the main container, provides a series of general service frameworks and open capabilities to merchants and brands across all industries. It's clear that Douyin's goal is simple: After surpassing 600 million daily active users, securing this rare key event like the World Cup further enriches Douyin's traffic goldmine. Compared to deep internal mining, choosing to open up externally, seeking more partners, and exploring more industry monetization solutions is undoubtedly a more efficient and diversified approach. The content ecosystem led by Douyin will generate greater popularity and value. So, viewing Douyin's various actions from the perspective of openness and borderless expansion, we find that focusing on the sports World Cup is not that simple; it's gradually becoming the fuse that connects various businesses. Major events like the World Cup are bringing more possibilities to Douyin's multiple businesses and explorations in various fields. Despite the many uncertainties of this World Cup, as the only short-video platform with broadcast rights, Douyin's value is highly anticipated. In the future, Douyin is heading towards becoming a super app like Meituan and WeChat.
Source: E-commerce News Pro (ID: kandianshang) | Author: Lao Dian