The Economics of V.League: Money Flow, Academies and the Survival Question of Vietnamese Football

In the stands of a stadium in northern Vietnam on a July afternoon, the outside temperature touched 38 degrees Celsius. A few thousand supporters still filled one corner of the stand, holding the flag of their home team. Inside the tunnel, a nineteen-year-old player had just signed the first professional contract of his life. The contract ran to three pages, with a starting salary of under ten million dong per month, and a release clause he had never read carefully. In another corner of the stadium, his agent was calculating which club to move the player to at the end of the season. Between those two men, a signature was placed, and a fate was decided.

I have sat in many stands like that, in Vietnam and in France. And each time, I ask myself the same question: where does the money in this football ecosystem actually come from, and where does it go?

Context: a football ecosystem living off the owner's pocket

Vietnamese football operates on a peculiar structure that few football nations in the world still preserve. V.League 1, the top division, comprises fourteen clubs. Almost none of them survives on its own revenue. Broadcasting money distributed to each club covers only a small fraction of the wage bill. Ticket sales, merchandise and shirt sponsorship revenue are modest too. The gap — usually the bulk of the budget — comes from a single source: the owner's pocket, typically a business or a conglomerate.

This model is not exclusive to Vietnam. Many Asian leagues operate the same way. But in Vietnam, dependence on the owner runs deeper than almost anywhere else. A club can exist for twenty years, win a few championships, produce a generation of national team players — then vanish within months when the parent company hits trouble. The history of V.League is full of once-famous names that withdrew: clubs belonging to the police sector, the transport sector, the steel sector, the banking sector. Every time a business pulls out, an entire community of supporters loses its team.

When I follow transfer news in Europe, I always remind myself of the lesson from Radio France Bleu in 2026: unverified, not on air. But in Vietnam, verifying the money flow is far harder, because most transactions are never disclosed. A club can sign a foreign striker on a salary that nobody outside the boardroom knows precisely. The figure reported in the press is usually only part of the picture.

This makes the analytical work harder, but also more interesting. When there are no official numbers, the analyst must read the traces. A club that suddenly signs three foreign players in one transfer window is usually a sign of a new money source. A team that abruptly liquidates a series of key players is usually a sign of a drying cash flow. To read a deal you do not need to listen to rumors; you only need to watch where the money goes.

Academies: money-printing machines or factories of hope?

The rare bright spot in this financial picture is the youth development system. Vietnam has a few properly invested football academies, most notably the Hoang Anh Gia Lai – JMG Academy, the PVF Center and the Viettel academy. These institutions emerged from the mid-2000s, when a few businesses decided to invest long-term instead of buying established players.

The Hoang Anh Gia Lai – JMG Academy opened in 2026 after years of preparation, in partnership with France's JMG academy. The first intake of course 1 — names such as Nguyen Cong Phuong, Nguyen Tuan Anh, Luong Xuan Truong, Nguyen Van Toan — became a phenomenon of Vietnamese football. They finished runners-up in the national U19 tournament, then featured in the miraculous run at the 2026 AFC U23 Championship under coach Park Hang-seo.

From an economic perspective, an academy is a dual asset. On one hand, it supplies players to the first team at a far lower cost than buying outside. On the other, when players mature, the club can sell or loan them for a considerable sum. A midfielder raised in the academy, if he moves to another domestic club or goes abroad to play, brings his parent club a transfer fee that no other investment can match.

I have witnessed a similar model in France, where academies such as Clairefontaine or the training centers of Lyon and Rennes act as talent-producing machines for all of Europe. The difference lies in this: in France, the development system is partly supported by the state and the federation, whereas in Vietnam the burden falls almost entirely on businesses. When a business struggles, the whole development system wobbles.

But there is a paradox that few people mention. The most effective academy is often the one in the most difficult financial position. When the parent club cannot afford wages, it is forced to sell young players earlier than planned — selling before their value peaks. A nineteen-year-old striker with great potential, kept for three more years, could be worth many times more. But if the club needs money for next month's wages, it must sell now. This is the crux: short-term cash flow determines long-term value.

The game of the parties: who pays, who receives, and the price paid

To read a Vietnamese football deal, I usually reconstruct three questions. Where does the buying club get its money? What does the player actually receive after tax, fees and intermediaries? And who is the ultimate beneficiary if the deal succeeds?

On the first question, the answer usually lies outside football. A club backed by a construction conglomerate can spend heavily during a favorable real estate period, then tighten its belt when the market turns. A bank-owned club can spend more steadily, but it too depends on the parent bank's business results. The money sources of Vietnamese football largely come from highly cyclical sectors. When the economy struggles, V.League feels it immediately.

On the second question, Vietnamese players earn modest wages by Asian standards. A national team regular might earn a salary of a few tens of millions of dong per month, far above the average income of a worker, but far below colleagues in Thailand, South Korea or Japan. A foreign player of average quality can earn more than the national team captain. This disparity creates a paradox: the club spends the most money on the players least attached to the community.

On the third question, the ultimate beneficiary is usually not the supporter. Supporters pay for tickets, buy shirts, spend time at the stadium — but they have no voice in the club's decisions. When a team changes owner, changes name, changes shirt color, the supporters can only accept it. I have witnessed this in both Vietnam and France, and it always leaves a similar bitter taste.

Contracts: a diary of hope behind the numbers

Behind every contract is a human being. That is what I learned after many years in this profession. When I read a transfer contract, I do not only see the transfer fee and the salary. I see the dream of a young player wanting to escape poverty, the worry of a father wanting a future for his son, the ambition of an owner wanting his club to be champions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the leagues were suspended, I received a flood of calls from backstage workers: stadium cleaners, ticket sellers, parking attendants. They were not mentioned in transfer news, yet they were the ones keeping the football machine running. COVID-19 showed me that football cannot live without its silent workers. In Vietnam, there are thousands of such people too: the sugarcane juice vendors outside the stadium gates, the ticket distributors, the pitch caretakers. When we talk about football economics, we often forget them.

The blind spot of the official story

The story most told by Vietnamese media is the story of talent. A brilliant young player, a gifted coach, a historic victory. Those stories are real, and they deserve to be told. But they obscure another story: the story of sustainability.

If tomorrow all the businesses sponsoring V.League stopped spending at once, how many clubs would survive? The honest answer is very few. This is the biggest blind spot of Vietnamese football. Success on the pitch cannot hide the fragility of the financial foundation beneath it.

I do not mean to deny the achievements. The Vietnam national team won the 2026 AFF Cup and repeated the feat in 2026. The golden generation of Vietnamese football proved that Vietnamese people can play at continental level. But the success of the national team and the sustainability of the national league are two different stories. A strong national team can be built from a few exceptional generations. A strong league needs a solid economic foundation for dozens of clubs.

What is worrying is that the gap between these two stories is widening. While the national team progresses, many V.League clubs still struggle with the wage problem. Young players sign professional contracts on low salaries, and many must take second jobs or rely on family support. A football ecosystem cannot develop sustainably if professional players cannot live by their profession.

The foreign player quota question

One of the most debated topics in Vietnamese football is the foreign player quota. Current rules limit the number of foreign players each club may register, aiming to protect opportunities for domestic players. But seen from an economic angle, the quota creates a complex effect.

When the number of foreign slots is limited, the value of each slot rises. Clubs are forced to select more carefully, but also to pay more for quality foreign players. The result is a paradox: the quota restricts quantity yet pushes up the cost of each foreign player. Meanwhile, domestic players still must compete with foreign colleagues who are paid more.

I believe the real issue is not the number of foreign players, but the quality of the domestic development system. If Vietnamese academies produced enough top-level players, clubs would naturally favor domestic players for economic reasons: they are cheaper, understand the culture better, and are more attached to the community. The quota is only a temporary fix, not a root solution.

The counter-intuitive angle

There is a widespread notion that Vietnamese football needs more money. I think that is true but not sufficient. The problem is not the amount of money flowing in, but how the money flow is organized.

A league is only sustainable when each club has multiple independent revenue streams: collective broadcasting rights, shared commercial revenue, a professional ticketing system, and a supporter base large enough to generate a steady cash flow. Vietnamese football currently lacks almost all of these. Focusing on a single source — the owner's pocket — creates dependence, and dependence creates instability.

I once thought differently. When I was young, I believed that all it took was a rich and devoted owner for a club to succeed. But after more than twenty years following football, I realized that the goodwill of one individual cannot replace a system. An owner can spend money out of passion, but passion does not generate revenue. When passion runs dry, the money stops, and the club disappears.

This leads to a conclusion that seems contrary to common intuition. Vietnamese football does not need more money from owners. It needs less dependence on owners. It needs a structure where the club is a self-operating economic entity, not a personal project. That sounds cold, but in fact it protects the very values supporters cherish: stability, identity, and the future.

An insider is not the person who knows the most, but the person who stays calmest when everything collapses. I have seen too many clubs collapse because an owner withdrew. And each time, I think of the supporters who stayed loyal for years.

Takeaway

At forty-six, I no longer chase hot news; I chase verified truth. And the truth about Vietnamese football is this: the financial foundation is more fragile than the glittering surface of victories. A contract is the record of greed, but also the diary of hope. Every signature of a young player is a promise to the future — and the question for those managing Vietnamese football is whether they will keep that promise, or let it drift away with the money flow of some owner.