The 2026 World Cup will be an unprecedentedly large tournament in history. Compared to 4 years ago held in Qatar, the number of participating teams increased to 48. The total number of matches was pushed up to 104, leading to a significant increase in broadcasting time and television rights value.
In Vietnam, 20 years ago, the World Cup copyright was worth 1 million USD and VTV owned it through acquisition from intermediaries. After 2 decades, FIFA has changed the way the world's biggest tournament copyright is sold by being willing to negotiate directly without intermediaries at major broadcasters in each country.
However, according to market changes and the scale of the 2026 World Cup, World Cup copyright costs can still reach 15-16 million USD. This cost poses a challenge for Vietnamese broadcasters. That is also the reason why in the last 2 World Cups, Vietnam Television only owned the tournament copyright 3-4 weeks before the opening match, with support from a number of corporations and businesses.
In return for the huge amount of investment, the owner also has the privilege of exploiting on many platforms, serving many different audiences.
FIFA offers 4 types for broadcasters to choose packages, suitable for the financial conditions of each unit. In addition to traditional types such as radio and television, exploiting the World Cup on the internet, mobile devices or taking advantage of resources on social networks also brings many opportunities for broadcasters to attract a large number of viewers, especially young fans in the corresponding countries.
From this basis, the broadcaster can find a variety of funding sources and corresponding advertising for various types of broadcasting.
Of course, in the opposite direction, owning and exploiting World Cup copyrights on many platforms also poses a personnel problem from broadcasters.
Instead of just focusing on broadcasting live or reporting football matches on television in a traditional way, Vietnamese broadcasters will have to allocate a lot of personnel to ensure maximum production of accompanying content.
Examples include broadcasting matches on OTT platforms, applications; highlight videos; unique sideline situations... for social networking platforms directly under the broadcaster's ecosystem.
The above tasks need to ensure updates on developments in real time. Meaning, the pressure, workload and number of personnel serving the World Cup will increase significantly.
Even when owning the right to exploit World Cup content domestically, Vietnamese broadcasters still have to compete with the speed of social networks, the flexibility of digital platforms and even the increasingly common situation of copyright infringement.
Faced with the problem of opportunities and challenges posed to broadcasters in exploiting World Cup copyright, the option of sharing exploited content between relevant units can be considered suitable for Vietnam.
Currently, in addition to VTV, some stations such as TV360, FPT Play, HTV have enough potential in terms of personnel and finance to be ready to coordinate and jointly exploit the copyright of the 2026 World Cup to the maximum.
In addition, in the "battlefield" of digital platforms and social networks, some strong media units in Vietnam are also waiting for offers, creating a fair exchange of benefits with the broadcaster owning the tournament copyright.
