With deep-rooted allegiances to foreign football brands, rising domestic spending power and the widespread adoption of smartphones, now is the perfect time for clubs looking to leverage football brand marketing in Vietnam.

Vietnam has become known in recent years for its love of football.

The national team is a treasure in Southeast Asia — and fans have an ardent devotion to foreign football clubs.

But despite a highly engaged and vociferous fan base, few foreign football clubs are yet to truly leverage this well of support.

Which is no surprise: harnessing support in Vietnam isn’t as easy as Google Translating global content and hoping it will land ‘top bins’.

“Younger audiences have a different relationship with content and expect to be understood and catered to in different ways,” said James Anderson, Business Director at Publicis Sport & Entertainment, talking about several key trends for 2020 in sports marketing worldwide. “They expect to participate in or alongside it”, he added.

Vietnam’s football fans are no different. They want much more.

Any such appeal to Asian football fans has to be localised and nuanced to create the sort of engagement that transforms an armchair fan into a commercially engaged supporter.

To help define marketing strategy, it’s worth taking a look at Vietnam’s football marketing story so far, which is still in its nascent chapters.

History of football coverage in Vietnam

Football became the most popular sport in Vietnam during the French colonial era of Cochinchina (from 1896). But it wasn’t until 1994 when Vietnam Television partnered with HTV to provide extensive coverage of the 1994 Football World Cup that it really captured the nation’s imagination.

People gathered in front of small television screens everywhere to watch live football matches and Vietnam’s love affair with the beautiful game was ignited.

Following the World Cup, the Premier League was first broadcasted on VTV3 in Vietnam during the 1998-1999 season — it remains the most popular league for Vietnamese — and Euro 2000 had Vietnamese fans eating, sleeping and breathing football.

Vietnam Television then partnered with the ADT Group in a deal to buy the domestic broadcasting rights of more football leagues in a bid to feed football-mad Vietnam.

The country’s embracing of Premier League coverage coincided with the long-term dominance of Manchester United, and this is still reflected in the high levels of support the Mancunians maintain today, despite less stellar performances in recent years.

When it was announced that Manchester United would play the opening match with Inter Milan at the International Champions Cup 2019 in Singapore, Vietnamese fans hunted for tickets to see their idols in the flesh for the first time.

Real passion needs real experiences. And with growing living standards and increased global integration, Vietnamese football fans are thirsty for authentic engagements with their favourite clubs.

They are no longer passive consumers. Some fans are prepared to make the pilgrimage to their club’s ground in England to experience match-days up-close-and-personal. 

Vietnamese also want to feel like first-class citizens when it comes to fandom, and that requires Vietnamese language content for social media users.

Clubs now need to think beyond quick-win content executions — such as Lunar New Year greetings in Vietnamese on their official social media channels — if they want to impress and excite fans.

“Repeating this year after year has become lazy and outdated,” says Nguyen Lam Binh Nguyen, former Social Media Consultant for Liverpool Football Club.

“The buzz has faded and going forward, teams need to get more creative.”

That’s why marketers need to think out of the box if they want to “erase the distance, not just geographically but mentally” between Vietnamese football fans and international football clubs on social media.

Vietnam’s football media landscape

Television remains the main channel for football in Vietnam and this popularity is reflected in the competition for domestic broadcast rights.

2007-2010
Since the Premier League became popular in Vietnam, VTC Digital Television bought the rights of the Premier League’s 2007-2010 seasons from ESPN Star Sports for $3.97 million. This meant Vietnamese football fans had to buy VTC’s digital sets and pay monthly subscription fees to watch their favourite football league.

2010-2013
The next three seasons’ television rights belonged to MP & Silva, who earned millions of dollars by selling broadcasting packages to service providers such as K+, VTVcab, SCTV, Hanoi Television, Ho Chi Minh Television, VNPT and FPT.

2013-2019
Trans World International (IMG) won the TV rights for the 2013-2016 seasons, continuing to profit as prices tripled the previous season’s. For the 2016-2019 seasons and 2019-2022 seasons, K+ have continued to outbid rivals for the rights.

Present day
While K+ also owns the television rights of the Premier League, UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League until 2021, VTVcab owns La Liga rights until 2023, and Next Media holds the rights to broadcast five seasons of the Bundesliga from 2020-2025, which are also live on Bong Da TV, The Thao TV and The Thao Tin Tuc on the VTVcab network. 

While television is still strong, it’s Vietnam’s high internet penetration and smartphone adoption that has truly changed behaviours for football fans up and down the country.

Digital channels
Vietnam officially recognised the internet in 1997 but the number of internet users only significantly grew to 4,059,392 users in 2006. 

Now, according to Digital 2023 Vietnam, 79.1% of the 98.53 million population are internet users - whether it is rural or urban, you will find people consistently glued to their smartphones (98.1% smartphone penetration).

A variety of websites have brought Vietnamese fans different choices to read breaking online news:

24h.com.vn is for hot daily news

Bongdaplus.vn is for more focused football content

Bongda.com.vn covers the latest football news

Thethao.vnexpress.net does sport news in general and is famous for its football videos 

The Sporting News is an American sports publishers who recently launched a Vietnamese edition

The Vietnam News Agency launched The Thao va Van Hoa Newspaper — the Sport and Culture Newspaper — to give up-to-date coverage of the World Cup 82, which gradually became the leading sports newspaper in Vietnam. It launched its own Youtube channel in 2016 to get among the action and add video content to its football coverage. 

The decline of printed football magazines

While the development of sport and football culture at the end of the 1990s in Vietnam saw a flood of new publications — one of the notable magazines is Tap Chi Bong Da (Football Magazine) produced under license by the Vietnam Football Federation — readerships have dropped off dramatically with the rise of smartphones, Facebook and YouTube.

The Ganassa Report: The State of European Football in East Asia 2020 (Ganassa) shows that 60% of surveyed European football fans follow their club’s news via the internet in their local language, 77% via social media in their own language, 60.1% via television and only 23% via newspapers and magazines, which we would suggest are the older and more traditional generations.

Thethao247.vn and 24h.com.vn are among Vietnam’s top 10 most visited websites by traffic according to Alexa, and throughout 2020, Bong Da (the Vietnamese word for “football”) was ranked 17th among the top Google search queries in Vietnam.

Up to 37% of Vietnamese fans now use online live streams instead of television to watch sports according to Statista.com, and, according to the Aquarius' CEO in Vietnam, more sports fans tend to watch matches via smartphones and tablets. Viewers are watching sports with multiple screens: TV to watch matches and smartphones or tablets to comment, share and live stream.

Social media in Vietnam

Up to 92% of 16-64-year-old Vietnamese internet users visit Youtube, with Facebook reported to be the second most used social media platform in Vietnam in 2020.

It’s easy to quickly find a lot of Facebook fan pages for foreign football clubs in Vietnam. These are communities where fans can connect with people sharing the same interests and love for their favourite football leagues or players (Vietnamese fans also create Facebook fan pages for famous individual stars such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Mesut Oezil).

Below are statistics of some official Facebook fan pages launched by Vietnamese supporters’ clubs.

Manchester United: 185,642 followers / 500-1.5K likes/post
Arsenal: 491,000 followers / 800-1.8K likes/post
Chelsea: 490,384 / 200-800K likes/post
Liverpool: 78,890 / 650-2K likes/post
Manchester City: 73,962 / 600-1.3K likes/post
Bayern Munich: 37,000 / 430-1K likes/post
Borussia Dortmund: 30,724 /  50-230 likes/post
Tottenham Hotspur: 80-750 likes/post

Generally, Facebook pages of supporters’ clubs such as Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City have the most followers — from 70,000 to 490,000 followers — with high engagements on each post (between 600 to 1,000 likes). 

Vietnamese fan clubs often organise fan talks or hold live streams with page admins to create more engagement among the community. Fan pages sometimes re-post content from official Facebook pages and Facebook Ads are used to promote supporters clubs’ offline events.

In addition to the official Facebook pages of European football teams — on which Vietnamese fans love to debate, predict and analyse — there are also unofficial Facebook pages and private groups, which are established to meet the demands of Vietnamese language social media content.

For example, if you search for “Liverpool Vietnam” on Facebook, it will give you a huge variety of results, including unofficial fan pages and groups. The scale of these fan pages aren't huge but they upload news and bring fans closer together to organise offline events and share their love for their clubs and favourite players.

Online to offline activities

Clubs on tour

In 1996, Vietnamese football fans were surprised when Juventus arrived in Vietnam for a friendly match. 

Nine years later, at the Honda Cup organised by VFF, the Vietnam national team played Barcelona B, which included first-team players such as Ivan Ruben, Abella Damia, Gonzalez Pena and Riera Magem. 

In 2008, Vietnam was chosen as a friendly opponent of the Brazillian Olympic team. This event was made even hotter with the participation of Ronaldinho. 

Vietnamese football fans also remember 2013 as a big year for fans, when Arsenal travelled to Vietnam for three days for a friendly match with the Vietnam national side. It was a dream come true for Arsenal fans in Vietnam and they could participate in a fan meeting with the players. A young man called Vu Xuan Tien became a viral sensation when he ran 5km through the city to follow his team’s tour bus.

The most recent high profile friendly fixture was against Manchester City in Vietnam on July 27th, 2015. Fans spent hours queuing in front of the My Dinh National Stadium to buy tickets, and thousands of Vietnamese fans joined the open training session/fan meet and greet at the stadium. 

Visiting legends

Retired professional footballers often visit, too.

Former Manchester United player, Andy Cole visited Vietnam in 2015 as an advisor to select 20 players for the team to play Than Quang Ninh Club.

David Beckham has visited four times (2003, 2005, 2014, 2019) and has remained a hot topic ever since.  

In 2019, Bundesliga held a Penalty Shootout Tournament in Ho Chi Minh City and live screening of the FC Schalke 04 / Borussia Dortmund derby with goalkeeping legend Roman Weidenfeller.

The winning team won tickets to experience a Bundesliga match from inside the stands in Germany.

During the pandemic in 2021, Manchester City partnered with SHB Bank in a project for local football development in Vietnam.

Three grassroots clubs across the country were presented with 50 sets of training gear from Manchester City and the offline campaign was showcased on digital channels with a three part documentary series on City’s Facebook page.

Opportunities for football marketing in Vietnam

With enthusiastic football fans, Vietnam has huge potential for international football clubs and leagues. More localised and country-related content could help to fill this gap for Vietnam’s market. 

Through more content targeted to Vietnamese football fans on the official Facebook accounts, Bundesliga, Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund, Tottenham Hotspur have “increased their popularity with a digital presence in the country”.

Manchester City has also grown their engagements with Vietnamese football fans through partnership activities with SHB Bank.

With few clubs really prioritising this rapidly-growing market, it is a perfect opportunity for front runners to seize their advantage, but there are existing challenges that all marketers need to prepare for before tackling Vietnam head on.

The lack of cultural understanding may create more distance in the relationship between foreign football brands and fans on the ground. Marketers require local insight to speak the language of the Vietnamese, both literally and metaphorically.

Though it will be a challenge at the beginning, done well it will form a solid foundation for a long-term relationship between football clubs and fans in the future.

While Vietnamese average wages aren’t huge, there is a growing middle class that is ready to spend money on official content, merchandise and experiences for years to come.

The clubs that understand this dynamic are sure to reap rewards.