Asiad 20 Kicks Off: Vietnam's U23 and Women's Teams Take the Field, but TV Rights Remain Unresolved

A week ago, I was sitting in the usual corner of a small café on Hang Bong Street, where every time a Vietnamese team plays, the old television gets turned up to full volume. The motorbike-taxi driver beside me, a man who has spent more than a decade attached to these match-watching gatherings, turned and asked me one simple question: "What time is kick-off? Which channel is it on?" I opened my phone, checked the schedule, then checked the list of broadcasters. There was no answer. By the morning of 14 September 2026, as Vietnam's women's team prepared for its opening match, no domestic broadcaster had yet come forward to say it held the rights to Asiad 20. A very simple question from a very ordinary man had struck a gap that the whole football ecosystem has not been able to answer. I have written about Vietnamese football for more than thirty years, have lived with teams, eaten with teams, sat in dressing rooms after defeats. And I have learned that matters that look like they are only about contracts, money and paperwork are often where a football nation reveals what it truly cares about. The 20th Asian Games, hosted in Japan, has its football programme kicking off before the opening ceremony. Vietnam's women's team opens at 2 PM on 14 September 2026 against Chinese Taipei in Group E. At 5 PM on 15 September 2026, Vietnam's U23 side faces Kuwait in Group C. The opening ceremony is scheduled for 19 September 2026. The scale of the event is enormous: 45 countries and territories, more than 11,000 athletes, 469 events across 43 sports. The most notable information lies off the pitch. According to Tuoi Tre, an entity on the Vietnamese side was reported to have come very close to buying television rights more than a week ago, but has since gone silent, and the reason has not been made clear. Meanwhile, five Southeast Asian neighbours — Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines — already have a rights holder. Vietnam is absent from that list. One thing should be said at once to avoid misreading the situation. The two teams are still training, still travelling, still preparing for their matches. What remains unresolved sits behind the pitch, at the stage where a match is delivered to viewers' eyes. That is why this story deserves to be seen as a problem for the whole football ecosystem, not as the private story of one broadcaster. Broadcast rights for a multi-sport event such as the Asian Games rest with the event's rights owner — usually the Olympic Council of Asia together with the host organising committee — and the football portion may be sub-licensed through the Asian Football Confederation. Rights are sold by territory. For the Vietnamese market, a rights package means the right to bring the tournament to domestic audiences, together with the right to exploit advertising, sponsorship and paid services. The difficulty of a rights deal signed close to the opening day lies in the compressed window for selling advertising. A broadcaster that buys rights typically recovers its money through three sources: advertising, subscriptions or pay-per-view, and sponsorship. When a deal is only closed a few days before kick-off, advertising almost has no time left to be negotiated, while subscriptions depend on whether viewers are willing to pay immediately. This is the classic condition that leaves the buyer passive and strips the seller of leverage. A last-minute deal also carries operational risk. Even once a contract is signed, the buyer still needs time to configure broadcast infrastructure, negotiate with intermediaries, arrange schedules, hire commentators and — most importantly — sell enough advertising to balance what has already been spent. For matches taking place only days after signing, almost all of this preparation is crammed into a very short window. Even if the deal closes in time, broadcast quality and audience access can still be affected. In the rights business, one rule is often repeated: the seller loses leverage as the clock counts down, while the buyer loses leverage once the price has been pushed up by the nearness of the event. Here, both sides are in a difficult position, and it is precisely this standoff that lets time run out without anyone giving ground. What stands out is that an entity being "close to closing" more than a week ago and then falling silent usually reflects one of a few possibilities: the two sides are apart on price; there is a snag with payment guarantees; or there is a paperwork and procedural problem. The buyer's hesitation is itself a signal, because if the price were reasonable and the terms clear, the deal would not have dragged on until the eve of competition. Looking regionally, the gap becomes clearer. Five Southeast Asian countries have rights, meaning their audiences know exactly where they will sit in front of a screen. In Vietnam, that question still hangs in the air. The comparison goes beyond who is fast and who is slow. It shows that the domestic market's capacity to prepare for international rights deals is out of step with the very sporting ambitions of the national teams. In the transmission chain from event to audience there are three links: the rights owner upstream; the broadcaster or streaming platform midstream; the audience and sponsors downstream. An unclosed deal severs the final link. Everything upstream still runs — teams still play, the ball still rolls — but no one at home can watch. In football, that loss is greater than in other sports, because it is the most anticipated discipline in the opening phase, with two Vietnamese teams taking the field before the opening ceremony itself. The scale makes clear that the football portion is no small matter. An event with 469 competitions across 43 sports, more than 11,000 athletes, running for weeks, is a vast media machine. But in Vietnam, what draws the mass audience in the early days is still usually football. So a gap in precisely this portion spreads far more widely than a gap in a sport with a smaller following. Based on my experience of following matches and major tournaments, the football portion is always the most valuable slice of a rights package for a domestic buyer. That means a bundled deal may be stuck precisely on the valuation of the football portion. The buyer wants to pay what it considers reasonable; the seller wants to hold the price of a continental event. That gap cannot easily be closed in a few days. Looking at how the five neighbouring countries operate, a common thread appears: they close rights earlier, usually through packages planned in advance, sometimes sharing costs across several broadcasters or platforms. That approach reduces risk for each side and preserves a reasonable price. Vietnam, standing outside that group, has lost both negotiating advantage and preparation time. I remember the 2026 season, when I followed Hanoi FC for ten months, taking notes at every session of Van Quyet, Quang Hai and the foreign player Moses Oloya. There were 37 occasions when I sat in the dressing room after a match, watching the coach point out mistakes, watching the pats on the back and the whispers not meant for outsiders. In that space I learned something simple: fans do not merely watch football, they participate in it. When the door to a match is shut — even if only by an unsigned contract — a part of the team is severed from its own community as well. Then came the 2026 World Cup in Russia, my first time as a field reporter at a global tournament. I mispronounced a player's name three times in the first half of the opening match. The community reacted fiercely, and I realised how one person's way of telling a story affects the people being told about. "I once mispronounced a person's name, and realised I had unknowingly erased their identity." The rights story is similar at another level: failing to broadcast a match means erasing the chance for fans to call out the names of their own players. Many will immediately reduce this story to a lack of money, to a market without enough strength. But the signals point elsewhere. The problem lies in the mismatch between sporting ambition and commercial execution. A football nation can dream of going far on the continental stage while still fumbling the business of getting its image out to the world. People still call Vietnam's national teams "top tier" in the regional arena. That label has a basis: at the most recent Asiad, Vietnamese football was seeded number one for the first time. But the very source being discussed adds a telling footnote: despite being seeded, the team was still not highly rated. Seeding is an administrative matter, decided by rankings and history; real strength is only known once the ball rolls. The mismatch between the two labels — "top tier" and "not highly rated" — mirrors something happening off the touchline. On the pitch, people want to paint a vision of going far. Off the pitch, they have not managed to close a television contract. "The dressing room does not lie — every whisper becomes an echo." And some echoes come not from players, but from meeting rooms where contracts remain unsigned. One further possibility deserves a straight look: the very fact of being "close but silent" may be used as a negotiating lever. When a major newspaper reports on a deal about to be completed, public pressure shifts to the buyer, forcing it to move faster or to explain itself. This is not rare in the rights world. What is worrying is that when that pressure is insufficient, the gap remains, and the ultimate loser is always the audience. Another blind spot is rarely mentioned. Fans usually find a way to watch, through foreign feeds or workarounds. But when they do, the sponsors of Vietnam's delegation lose the visibility they should have received, and the community loses a chance to sit together. What is lost is not a few million views, but the thread connecting the national team to its home audience — something created precisely by shared match-watching evenings. Those held responsible in the public eye are usually the federation, even though broadcast rights are a commercial matter rather than a sporting one. This is football's familiar paradox: everything off the pitch, from ticket prices to rights fees, is ultimately attributed to those who run the game. The longer the silence, the wider the gap between expectation and reality. I do not know whether, on the morning of 14 September 2026, when Vietnam's women's team takes the field, the motorbike-taxi driver on Hang Bong Street will find a channel to watch. But one thing I know for certain: if that match fails to reach a domestic audience, the memory of it will fade faster than any defeat on the pitch. "There were years when I did not merely write about a team, but learned to listen to its breathing." And that breathing sometimes needs only a screen at the right moment to avoid being cut off. When the ball finally rolls, will someone step forward to answer the simplest question a fan can ask?