600 to 1,000 Billion VND a Year for Vietnamese Football: The Blueprint Exists, the Foundation Does Not

On a Tuesday afternoon, from the stand of a First Division ground, I counted 312 people. A 22-year-old midfielder came on in the 71st minute, touched the ball four times in the nineteen minutes that remained, and the whistle went. It was his fourth appearance of the entire season. I wrote it down: nineteen minutes, four touches, none of them in the opposition half. Four days later, a Dân trí report said Nguyễn Đức Thụy, a candidate for the presidency of the Vietnam Football Federation for the 2026–2030 term, wants to mobilise 600 to 1,000 billion VND a year for Vietnamese football, starting in 2027.

The two events sit four days apart and a silence apart. On one side, a player trained for ten years who lacks minutes exactly when he is ripest. On the other, the largest financial blueprint Vietnamese football has ever published in an election season. An empty stadium is the audition of the truth.

Context: five revenue lines and one budget line struck out

The programme targets 600–1,000 billion VND a year, roughly 23.5 to 39.2 million USD at a reference rate of 25,500 VND per dollar. Five revenue lines are named: sponsorship, broadcast rights, football services, digital content and other socialised sources. Attached to it is a pledge of 100 percent socialisation — football fully self-financing — and the surrender of roughly 80 billion VND of state budget each year, money that would be redirected to Olympic and ASIAD medal sports.

On the spending side, the programme promises 3 billion VND per V.League club per season, 2 billion per First Division club, 2 billion per women's club, and 2 to 3 billion for each qualified local federation. Federation payroll is projected to rise two to three times from 2027. Structurally, the V.League is floated for expansion from 14 to 16–18 teams and the First Division to 18–20, with an explicit caveat that this is a research option rather than a decision.

One element deserves credit: an audit by one of the Big Four and cross-supervision among member organisations is the strongest institutional clause in the document. Most federations in the region publish far less.

The machine always has a human screw

From my experience tracking matches, I try one exercise before believing any plan: add up what has already been promised before adding up what will be raised. With this programme, the arithmetic is striking.

Sixteen V.League clubs at 3 billion, plus 18 to 20 First Division clubs at 2 billion, plus 7 to 8 women's clubs at 2 billion, plus 20 qualified local federations at 2 to 3 billion, plus the payroll uplift and futsal, beach football and school football, lands at roughly 165 to 250 billion VND. Add the 80 billion needed to replace the surrendered state budget and the pre-committed total is 245 to 330 billion VND.

Set against the target, that means 25 to 33 percent of the 1,000 billion figure, or 41 to 55 percent of the 600 billion figure, is spent before a single đồng reaches a pitch, sports medicine, a youth academy or a bid to host an international tournament.

The rest of the problem lies elsewhere: the programme discloses no current federation revenue, no signed contracts, no pipeline. A credible plan runs current revenue, contracted revenue, pipeline, then new categories. Here the first step is blank. The spread between 600 and 1,000 is 67 percent — unusually wide for a document described as being concretised by financial plans.

Revenue structure deserves scrutiny too. The names attached to the plan belong to large Vietnamese corporates: Vingroup, the SHB group, the HAGL/THACO group, ThaiGroup. Four counterparties, three or four signatures. That concentration turns commercial risk into relationship risk, and turns one failed national-team cycle into a delayed sponsorship renewal cycle. Vietnamese corporates also prefer project-branded, visible sponsorship — stadium naming, national-team kit, tournament title — over untied cash to a federation. Money may arrive, but restricted, while the club subsidy programme needs unrestricted funds.

The match calendar is left entirely open. A 14-team single round-robin is 26 rounds; 16 teams is 30; 18 teams is 34. Layered on top are FIFA windows, the ASEAN Championship, the SEA Games and AFC club matchdays. Without simultaneous squad deepening, expansion produces a paradox: more matches, lower-quality minutes.

And the most consequential technical question hangs: the foreign-player quota. Thụy correctly names the tension between foreign quality and domestic opportunity, but the programme offers no quota mechanism, no age-based rule, no transition schedule. Expanding from 14 to 16–18 teams without a youth-registration or homegrown-minute rule means the extra minutes flow easily into mid-tier imports and veteran locals. The machine always has a human screw, and this one has not been tightened.

One physical constraint is rarely mentioned: going from 14 to 16–18 teams requires two to four additional clubs meeting AFC-linked licensing criteria — pitch, academy, financial structure. That is a supply constraint, not an administrative decision.

Contrarian: the votes are in the First Division, not the V.League

The pitch never forgets, but it forgives. Federations forgive far more slowly.

Read the subsidy schedule closely and a voting map appears. A First Division club receives 2 billion VND a season and is promised a larger league of 18 to 20 teams — two benefits, same direction. At local level, 20 of 63 federations qualify for 2 to 3 billion each, a figure that is modest nationally and enormous for a provincial federation. A federation congress is where these blocs vote in an organised way. Expansion plus local subsidies therefore functions as a far more effective political offer than a technical reform.

The correct technical reform is cheaper and more invisible: a reserve or U21 league played regularly, a loan system with minimum-minute clauses. Those mechanisms target the exact pain — the 22-year-old from the opening scene — but generate no visible patronage. They produce no photographs.

The second risk is cyclical. Surrendering 80 billion VND of state budget is a one-way ratchet. Once that line is allocated to Olympic and ASIAD sports, reclaiming it after a revenue shortfall is politically near-impossible. The programme converts a soft dependency into a hard commitment, precisely when Vietnamese football's commercial value is most sensitive to national-team results.

What to watch next term

If this programme is executed, the first thing I want to see is not the 1,000 billion figure but a single A4 page listing the federation's current revenue, its signed contracts, and a mechanism for youth minutes. Those three pages cost less than any subsidy, and they decide whether nineteen minutes for a 22-year-old become ninety. Vietnamese football now has an architect. What remains is to check whether the ground will hold the foundation.