Vietnam Jails Pirate Football Streamers for Up to a Year, Three Escape Prison

A Vietnamese court convicted 14 people connected to Bún Chả TV, a pirate sports-streaming service that carried Premier League and Champions League matches with Vietnamese commentary. Eleven received prison terms of eight to twelve months; three commentators received ten-month sentences that were suspended. The operation reportedly streamed more than 150,000 matches and attracted hundreds of thousands of daily visits. Police said it functioned like an underground company, with teams handling programming, commentary, search optimization and accounting. Advertising and referrals to illegal gambling sites were its main revenue sources, with investigators alleging profits exceeding 20 billion dong, about US$760,000. All defendants reportedly admitted the charges and cooperated.

The convictions mark a tougher phase in Vietnam’s copyright enforcement, following a government crackdown and a U.S. Trade Representative investigation criticizing the country’s limited deterrent penalties. A law firm representing the Motion Picture Association described the ruling as evidence of stronger enforcement, but its account emphasized prison terms without noting that three were suspended. The alleged organizer, Bùi Bá Hiến, is not among those reported convicted. Police later issued a wanted notice for a person of the same name, an esports executive accused under the same copyright law, but reporting has not established whether he is the same person. Vietnamese law allows sentences of up to three years for copyright infringement, leaving open whether these terms satisfy Washington’s demand for stronger deterrence.