Do Vietnamese people need to watch Vietnamese football?

January 19, 2015 17:24

The TV copyright war initiated by Mr. Kien, before he was in trouble with the law, to snatch it from AVG shows that broadcasting live matches in V-League is perhaps only less important than broadcasting the English Premier League.

This importance is not necessarily built on the level of attractiveness or entertainment, but is affirmed by the conversion value that TV stations have to accept to get the rights to broadcast matches live, which is unimaginable compared to a few years ago.

Specifically, the 15 minutes required to broadcast pre-, mid-, and post-match advertising programs for V-League financial sponsors, if calculated cheaply on a channel with low viewership like VTV6, is also hundreds of millions of VND. Previously, VTV only paid at most 30-40 million VND for the right to broadcast a match.

And surely not many people have forgotten that VTV had to accept to buy back the copyright of V-League from AVG, which showed that VTV could not do without V-League, even though it was a program that was both costly in terms of resources and unattractive in terms of advertising. Accepting to knock on AVG's door at that time was not at all pleasant because VTV's rival was both young and partly the reason for many big names of VTV to leave.

The class that watches Vietnamese football both on television and in the stadium is said to be older than those who watch international football on television, and they may not create pressure from social networks, but their methods of protest, although quite classic (a few phone calls, or handwritten letters), create very large direct pressures.

And the political significance cannot be ignored because many football teams in the V-League, even after becoming corporations, still take on the role of serving the community in localities where top-level sports are almost zero.

But it is not necessary to have it at all costs.

But the revenue of 15-20 billion VND that VPF currently receives from sponsors and in return, VPF includes them in the mandatory advertising package when broadcasting V-League does not reflect the true value.

It is not that it is only about 1/3 of what Mr. Kien drew when he took back the copyright from AVG (signed for 20 years with VFF), but it has a sense of responsible contribution if we know that HA.GL and DT.Long An are the most active brands belonging to Mr. Duc (Vice President of VFF, owner of HA.GL Club) and Mr. Thang (Chairman of the Board of Directors of VPF and owner of DT.Long An Club).

V-League broadcast programs for many years have had almost no advertisements even though VTV has broadcast on VTV3 for many years.

That may be the reason why VPF believes that television copyright money is something that no longer exists even though the barter method (exchanging matches and advertising time for broadcasting rights) is bringing them a large amount of money.

When support is not charity

But even though there are many good-natured colors, the television copyright money in the support package also needs to be divided professionally as VPF has been aiming for.

Sharing profits according to club rankings could create a real incentive for clubs if it eventually covered 30% or more of their spending budget each season (as with European football).

And then, building a system of moral points for clubs as a basis for dividing financial support like today could also force clubs to move towards a more decent football, starting from the organization of matches to the playing style.

But, for a tournament where many clubs do not yet know what form television rights exist, that journey cannot be short.

VPF will organize V-League image production

VPF General Director Pham Ngoc Vien said that the organization is aiming for a world football standard, which is to organize the production of images of V-league matches and then sell clean airwaves to television stations. Currently, major football tournaments in the world operate in this form, such as the World Cup, Euro, Premier League...

Mr. Vien believes that only then will the purchase and sale of television rights in V-League be carried out in accordance with the procedures of professional football. This could also be an opportunity to standardize the image quality of V-League on television channels. Currently, all stations are producing according to SD (normal) standards while audiences are used to watching international matches in HD (high definition). In the future, VPF can have its own television channel, according to Mr. Vien.

According to TTVH