Vietnam Overseas

The football market of Vietnam has witnessed some big transfers and a question has been raised: Is there any common price level in the ‘market’ of footballers in Vietnam?

The contract of half back Nguyen Minh Phuong with Dong Tam Long An club started with the 2003 football season and expired at the end of the 2007 football season. Becoming a free player, Minh Huong has the right to choose his new club. There is rumour that Dong Tam Long An paid VND1.5 billion (US$93,700) to keep Minh Phuong. Meanwhile, this club’s executive manager, Pham Phu Hoa, said that the club signed a five-year contract worth VND500 million ($31,200) with Minh Phuong.

The actual value of the contract is still secret but based on the common price in the ‘football market’ of Vietnam, the two above numbers are absurd.

In the market of footballer transfers in Vietnam, players are separated into two groups: outstanding and normal. In the first group are players who were and are members of the national squad and in the second group are fair-quality and young ones.

To find the truth about the football transfer market, transfer deals of Becamex Binh Duong club are worth looking at since it is the pioneer in football transfer.

In early 2006, Binh Duong signed a two-year contract to get East Asia Bank team’s goal keeper The Anh worth VND800 million ($50,000), including VND300 million ($18,700) for The Anh. Also, with VND300 million, Binh Duong got half back Tran Truong Giang from Tien Giang team at the end of 2006. Binh Duong has set the pay for star players, VND150 million per football season.

That is the price for ’stars’. For potential players, it is around VND70 million ($4,300)/season. Coming to Binh Duong club at the same time as The Anh, half back Phung Cong Minh of Song Lam Nghe An team and full back Huynh Quang Thanh of East Asia Bank team received just VND150 million for two football seasons. At present, the positions of Cong Minh and Quang Thanh are different and their incomes are much higher.

Hoa Phat-Hanoi, though a big team in Vietnam, cannot lure stars because its pay cannot compare to Binh Duong, which is called Chelsea Vietnam. However, it got half back Van Hieu of Binh Dinh early this year with VND300 million for three football seasons and half back Cao Sy Cuong of Hanoi ACB with VND480 million ($30,000) for four years.

In 2006, Southern Steel-Saigon Port had to spend VND1.6 billion ($100,000) to keep Trung Kien till 2011 (over VND300 million/season). The price of Trung Kien has since fallen since he didn’t perform well. However, The Cong has recently paid VND200 million/season to Southern Steel-Saigon Port to ‘borrow’ Trung Kien.

Though the ‘market’ of football doesn’t operate openly, it has its fixed floor price. That’s why nobody believes the rumour that an anonymous club only offered VND3.2 billion ($200,000) for half back Huy Hoang and goalkeeper Hong Son of Song Lam Nghe An (2 billion for Hoang and 1.2 billion for Son). Recently, the news that Song Lam Nghe An paid VND850 million ($53,000) to keep Cao Xuan Thang for five years more is also unbelievable.

Posted September 30, 2007, Source: TT & CS, VietNamNet Bridge

Huy Hoang

VietNamNet Bridge – By falling to seventh place at the end of this year’s football season, Song Lam Nghe An will lose 10% of funding from its donor. Lacking financial support, the team will be unable to keep its key players.

According to anonymous sources, some football clubs are ready to pay several billion dong to buy some key players of Song Lam Nghe An, whose contracts are about to expire, such as Huy Hoang, Van Vinh, Hong Son and Xuan Thang.

Song Lam Nghe An’s manager Ho Van Chiem said that the club was resigned about losing its players.

“The club can’t meet minimum requirements of players and when players don’t want to stay with the club, we will not hold them because they have contributed greatly to our club,” said Mr. Chiem.

As Mr. Chiem has said, the green light has been given for the departure of Song Lam Nghe An’s players. Thus, good players like Huy Hoang, Hong Son, Van Vinh, Xuan Thang and Nhu Thuan are selecting suitable destinations.

As the club can’t afford to keep its key players, according to Mr. Chiem, Song Lam Nghe An will take some young players from its U-21 team as alternatives in the next football season. Among new faces called up could be Cong Minh, Quoc Tuan, Van Hoang, Trong Hoang and Duc Anh.

Song Lam Nghe An will try to keep a foreign player, Valdiney, and invite Alphonse to return; however, with the departure of its stars, the club will surely face a dreary season.

Posted October 2, 2007, Source: TT TPHCM

Sports marketers can gain a net profit of at least VND2 billion (US$125,800) each season, provided that Viet Nam football stays clean, according to Tran Duc An, general director of the Viet Nam Football Development Joint Stock Company (VFD).  A national-level match-fixing scandal last year – for which players, coaches and referees were detained under suspicion – saw sponsors fall away from Vietnamese football, leaving the Viet Nam Football Federation (VFF) in financial dire straits.  A source from VFF said the body’s deficit in the first six months of this year had reached VND3 billion, due to a lack of sponsorship. 

The VFF was performing well financially, prior to the match-fixing scandal. In the period from 2000 to 2003, the national men’s team – the main revenue-earner for the country’s football governing body – secured sponsorship from Tiger Beer, Pepsi and Adidas.  In 2004, VFF signed a three-year sponsorship deal with the Bank for Foreign Trade of Viet Nam (Vietcombank), in which the bank was to provide the national men’s team VND3.5 billion (more than $220,000) for the national men’s team each year. 

But when seven national team members were arrested for fixing a game between Viet Nam and Myanmar during SEA Games in the Philippines last year, Vietcombank announced its withdraw from the contract.  Vietnam Airlines, another sponsor and the team’s main transporter, also ended their contract with the VFF after six months. 

Investigations have also begun into match-fixing during the 2001 V-League national championship.  When the V-League, which started in January, suffered a lack of sponsorship this year, VFF signed the VFD as an exclusive marketer for the V-League and National Cup from 2005 to 2009 for VND8 billion ($503,144). 

The V-League season ended on August 20, but the VFF is still looking for a sponsor for the national team. Lotus Steel company has made an offer of $100,000 for the men’s team over one year. According to VFF’s vice chairman, Le Hung Dung, who is in charge of finance, VFF has to agree to the offer, which is expected to be signed next month, during a crucial time.  “We have to accept a lower price for our product at the moment. But we can again raise the price and attract sponsorship by cleaning up football and putting in a good performance through the next two months of tournaments,” Dung said. 

The Lotus Steel offer has been like a last-minute save for VFF, as the national team has not had a major sponsor since last December, except for Chinese sports equipment producer, Li Ning, who signed a three-year contract to provide jerseys for both the men’s and the women’s national football teams.  The men’s team has no shortage of tournaments this year including the Agribank Cup, the Capital Cup in Ha Noi in October and November, and the Bach Viet Cup in HCM City, before the Asian Games take place in Qatar this December. 

Long road ahead  lthough Vietnamese football has faced scandals involving dozens of players, coaches and referees at a national level, football is still the most lucrative sport for businesses in the sport sponsorship market. 

Currently, the VFF is trying to sell its two golden products – the men’s team and V-League – but the men’s team is still having a hard time.  At a meeting in late 2004, VFF announced that it had gained VND18.2 billion ($1.13 million) from ticket sales at the Southeast Asian Championship (Tiger Cup), International Agribank Cup and 2006 Germany World Cup qualifying round, as well as more than VND3 billion ($186,000) from sponsorship deals. 

At the VTV-T&T Cup in Ha Noi this year, VFF also gained ticket sales worth approximately VND5 billion ($312,000).  But the VFF’s greatest challenge now is finding a way to turn the national team’s trademark into gold. To do this, VFF’s marketing section will have to make their most skilful plays in the marketing field to attract more sponsors to its teams. 

An official of VFF admitted that the marketing section had not fulfilled its role in it’s sports marketing activities.  Recently, VFF’s vice general secretary, Nguyen Hanh, in charge of marketing and sponsorship, announced her official resignation. Her withdrawal creates difficulty for the VFF in drawing sponsorship. 

In a meeting last month, VFF’s chairman, Nguyen Trong Hy also said marketing and sponsorship section still lacked professional marketers. Most of VFF’s marketing members are not marketing specialists or business people.  VFF will soon be able to solve its short-term financial woes when Viet Nam co-hosts the final round of Asian Cup along with Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia next year. — VNS (Posted September 26, 2006)

Despite a  1-0 Loss to Columbia and elimination from Copa America, there is a bright spot. Midfielder Lee Nguyen had immediate impact upon entering the match. Nguyen who is going to be competing for playing time at PSV Eindhoven this upcoming season played three very good balls forward to create scoring opportunities that were squandered by the attackers. Nguyen is someone who is going to be counted on by the national team in 2010 and beyond.