When the My Dinh grass is still wet: broadcasting rights and the heartbeat of a generation

I write slower than one heartbeat so as not to miss the moment a boot touches the grass. On Saturday afternoon, I sat in the auxiliary stand of My Dinh Stadium when the Vietnam national team entered the pitch for a pre-match familiarisation session before an international friendly. There was no goal, no save, but there was one detail I recorded all afternoon: a boy in an old T-shirt, sitting near the corner flag, wiping his own sports shoes while his eyes stayed on every step of players such as Nguyen Quang Hai, Pham Tuan Hai and Nguyen Tien Linh. The distance from the boy to the touchline was only about one and a half metres, but enough to feel the breath of the match. I do not know the boy's name. A security guard said he is the grandson of the person in charge of stadium cleaning. Every afternoon, the boy sits there, asking for no autographs, taking no photos, just watching. When I asked, he said: “I only want to see the ball roll.” That answer reminded me of many other conversations in cafés near the stadium, where fans do not talk about tactical formations but about ticket prices being too high and about how to watch a match when broadcasting rights are split among many platforms. The current context of Vietnamese football is not simple. The national team is preparing for the 2027 Asian Cup qualifiers; V-League clubs are also racing to invest in order to compete at continental level. In the meeting rooms of broadcasting rights holders, the hot growth figures of the sports media market are mentioned constantly. A report from VuaBong.vn shows that live viewership on digital platforms in Vietnam increased by 37% in 2026. However, advertising revenue only rose by 9% in the same period. The gap between these two numbers reveals a reality: fans are watching more, but the football economy has not yet turned that attention into sustainable revenue. The broadcasting rights for the 2026-2026 V-League season are reported to have risen by about 22% compared with the previous season, according to reference data from VangBong.vn. Streaming platforms spend large sums to secure broadcast rights, but their revenue models still depend on advertising and short-term subscriptions. I once heard an executive say they need at least 1.2 million paid subscribers to break even. That figure is three times the current subscriber base of the largest platform. This is not a new story. Paid television in Europe once burned billions of euros to buy rights, then had to sell them to technology groups at a loss. Based on my experience following matches from my days as a reporter in Spain, broadcasting rights only have real value when they are attached to a community willing to pay for content, not merely for the habit of free viewing. In Vietnam, the fan community is large but has not been nurtured properly. They watch matches through short clips on social media, join Telegram groups to discuss, then share emotions through long comments. But they are rarely invited into a media product with depth. I remember an evening in Moscow in 2026, when I sat with 50 Spanish supporters in a bar and realised that they were not only arguing about the match but also about how the team treated the head coach. That is what connects them to the club longer than any rights contract. Similar stories are happening in Vietnam. A supporter in Hanoi can wake up at four in the morning to watch the national team play abroad. They remember every minute the ball rolled, every missed shot. But when they go to the stadium, they must pay a large amount for tickets, or subscribe to three or four different applications to watch all competitions. The fragmentation of rights makes fans exhausted. Instead of choosing one platform, they return to highlight clips, check results on news websites, and gradually lose the feeling of living inside the live atmosphere of the match. Many people think the problem lies in the high price of broadcasting rights. I do not believe that. If rights were too expensive, platforms would not buy them. The problem lies in how we build trust. A cheap right without good content is like a beautiful stadium without spectators. Vietnamese fans are willing to pay, but they want to know where their money goes. They want to see their team invested in, young players given opportunities, and stories behind the dressing room told honestly. When I wrote about Carlos Soler in 2026, I received 1,200 shares in one night, not because I revealed transfer news, but because I told the detail of him cleaning his boots before entering the pitch. The fan community is always hungry for such details. We often hear that Vietnamese football needs to be more professional. But professionalisation does not mean mechanically applying foreign revenue models. In Spain, I learned that the value of a club comes from the bond between the team and the neighbourhood. In Vietnam, that bond is still neglected. Open training sessions are rare; the dressing room is almost a private world; and young players rarely appear in media stories before they become stars. I do not need the dressing room to be open, as long as a supporter opens their heart. From those quiet confessions, I write most of my articles. The afternoon at My Dinh Stadium ended with light rain. The boy who cleaned his shoes stood up, folded his towel, put it in his pocket, and disappeared behind the fence. I do not know whether he will become a player one day. But I know one thing: if football leaders only chase rights and revenue, they will lose eyes like his. Every article is a heartbeat, and I am the one keeping the rhythm for a whole river of singing people. Will we be patient enough to listen to that heartbeat before turning it into a number on a financial report?