Leaving Hang Day restaurant
Before 2023, The Cong Viettel Club and Hanoi FC used Hang Day Stadium as their home stadium when competing in the V.League. When Hanoi Police Club returned to the V.League, Hang Day Stadium had another "home" and that happened normally in the 2023 season. However, by the end of 2023, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) sent a dispatch to the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) regarding the implementation of regulations on criteria for organizing professional football tournaments, in which, only a maximum of 2 teams are allowed to share the same stadium.
After a period of working until the second half of July, the decision from the Hanoi People's Committee that The Cong Viettel must choose another location as its home stadium. "Based on AFC regulations as well as ensuring that VFF is qualified for AFC to directly allocate slots to participate in Asian club tournaments in the 2024-2025 season, supporting The Cong Viettel Club to use Hang Day Stadium as its home stadium this season is not appropriate. AFC regulations have created many difficulties for clubs in choosing their home stadium, and are also beyond the wishes of Hanoi City. We hope that the Ministry of National Defence will share with Hanoi City.
To ensure compliance with AFC regulations, Hanoi City respectfully requests the Ministry of National Defence to contact the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to consider and support The Cong Viettel Club to use a suitable stadium to register as its home stadium for the 2024-2025 season and in the following seasons" - the document clearly stated.
And the military team chose My Dinh Stadium in the 2024-2025 season...
Move into a "big house" and worry
My Dinh is the national stadium, in theory, moving to a “new home” with its location, status and reputation… should be a joy for the clubs. But in reality, for Vietnamese football, it is a different story, from the opposite perspective. Coming to a “new home” is full of worries.
My Dinh Stadium has a capacity of more than 40,000 seats, far surpassing other famous stadiums in the North such as Thien Truong Stadium (Nam Dinh), Lach Tray Stadium (Hai Phong) and Hang Day Stadium (Hanoi)... While somewhere else, fans want the stadium capacity to be as large as possible, for Vietnamese football, a large stadium is a vast source of worries.
According to statistics in the 2023-2024 season, V.League has an average of 5,890 spectators coming to the stadium per match, but of course, the average is different for each club. While the Steel Blue Nam Dinh has an average of 13,230 fans coming to Thien Truong per match, the 2 teams Hai Phong and Cong An Ha Noi are in the range of 8,000 to 9,000, which is considered high, The Cong Viettel is only 4,808 - only higher than 4 other teams.
The most crowded home match of The Cong Viettel was 8,000 (2 matches) and the lowest was 2,000. With these numbers, moving to My Dinh Stadium is indeed a concern. There may be some solutions to mobilize fans to the stadium, but it is not certain that the number will go hand in hand with the economic value from ticket sales. Meanwhile, the team will have to spend around 200 million VND per match to rent My Dinh Stadium (the price is calculated for domestic matches).
In football in leading countries, in addition to advertising and sponsorship, supporters and fans are a “lifeline” to ensure a large portion of revenue from ticket sales, competition uniforms, souvenirs, as well as food and beverage services at the stadium... Vietnam is different, when football cannot be an effective combination of business and entertainment, the cash flow still flows in a way that cannot help clubs get rich but only makes it more and more difficult...
