ASEAN Cup 2026 and Asiad 20 Broadcast Rights Still Unsold: FIFA Packages, Southeast Asia Stays Out

The night Vietnam won the ASEAN Cup, the pavement along Bach Dang in Da Nang was packed. I stood at the corner of the Dragon Bridge listening to the roar from portable speakers, and one very professional thought crossed my mind: which channel will carry the next match? Three weeks later, there is still no answer.

On September 26 at 19:30, Vietnam face the Philippines at Si Jalak Harupat Stadium in Bandung. Three days later, in the same competition, comes Thailand. On October 2, in Jakarta, comes Pakistan. The fixtures are printed. The squad's training plan has been finalised. Head coach Kim Sang Sik remains in place. Only one thing has not been printed: the name of the rights holder.

According to reporting by VietNamNet, a major Vietnamese broadcaster is "close to successfully buying" the FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026 rights. That word "close" needs to be read slowly. In the rights market, "close" is a non-binding state: no contract, no price, no payment schedule. The broadcaster is said to be negotiating at a reasonable price, and expects to redistribute coverage to domestic television units afterwards.

On the Asiad 20 side, the story is heavier. A broadcaster executive said plainly that buying the rights to this multi-sport event is very difficult, to the point that even in Japan, the host country, negotiations have reached an impasse. The Games feature 43 sports and 469 events, running from September 19 to October 4. Vietnam's delegation has set a target of four to six gold medals and a top-20 finish.

The most telling detail sits in one short line in the source: as of now, no entity in Southeast Asia owns the rights to the football tournament. Vietnam is not slow. The whole region is standing outside.

A gap that belongs to no one

After decades in this trade, I have learned something from my own mistakes: only when you turn an error into a system does the error become useful. With this rights story, the simplest systematisation runs like this. If only one Vietnamese broadcaster is late to buy, that is the story of one broadcaster. If all of Southeast Asia has not bought, that is the story of a structure.

Based on my experience covering matches and observing rights negotiations from the hallway, this signal matters more than every transfer headline this week. A market where the entire region stays outside is not a market short of money. It is a market rejecting a price.

To understand why, three layers need to be separated: who is selling, who is buying, and which moment makes the two sides struggle to meet.

The seller has changed

The key shift is not in the price, but in who is selling. Regional Southeast Asian football competitions were traditionally organised and sold by the regional federation. A regional product, a regional price, a regional negotiation. When a global body organises the event and controls the commercial rights, everything moves up a tier: the package is built globally, the price is pegged globally, and the negotiators sit globally too.

The source describes negotiating with FIFA as "more complex than for previous regional tournaments." That is an understatement. Negotiating with a regional federation and negotiating with FIFA differ in three concrete ways. First, package structure: regional rights are usually sold territory by territory, with a separate contract and a separate price for each country. Global packages are bundled across multiple territories and sometimes force buyers to take markets they do not want. Second, payment terms: contracts with a regional federation tend to be flexible, while contracts with a global body tend to be rigid on schedule and currency. Third, decision authority: a broadcaster may persuade a regional federation through relationships and communication plans, but it is much harder to persuade a global machine with anything that is not in a spreadsheet.

Who is buying, and why nobody has yet

The largest potential buyers in the region are national broadcasters. This group is facing a problem I have seen repeat many times: advertising revenue does not rise with rights fees, but audience expectations rise with emotion.

A broadcaster wanting to buy rights must answer three internal questions before signing. How much to pay. How much comes back from advertising, sponsorship and digital packages. And if there is a loss, who is accountable. For a football tournament involving the national team, the third question is usually answered with a line that does not appear in the accounts: we must buy it anyway, because the audience is waiting. But when the price crosses a certain threshold, that answer begins to wobble.

What is notable is that the unsold situation is not confined to Vietnam. The source confirms no entity in Southeast Asia owns the rights. Vietnam has a large audience, the national team just won the regional title, and commercial appeal is obvious. If even such a market has not closed, the obstacle sits more on the pricing side than the demand side.

In other words, this is the stance of a buyer's market meeting a seller's price that has not yet matched. Economists call it a failure of supply and demand to clear. Fans put it more simply: they do not know where to watch.

Asiad: a package that cannot be split

If the regional football story is a pricing problem, the Asiad story is a structural one. The Games have 43 sports and 469 events. No broadcaster buys 469 events to show them all. They buy a package, then choose the sports people watch. But the package must be paid for in full.

This is where a lesson from the 2026 World Cup in Moscow comes back to me. I was sent to Russia that year, and during a group-stage match I misnamed a player three times in the first half. The shame forced me to review the tapes for two weeks and open a private group asking colleagues to flag every pronunciation error. Only then did I understand: the smallest professional error can break a reader's trust. If you sow words, you reap responsibility. The same applies to rights: buying a 469-event package and broadcasting only a few dozen events is a huge margin of error, and it lands directly in the financial report.

The cost of a multi-sport package far exceeds what a single market can pay. The source says that even in Japan, the host country, negotiations are stuck. That is an important signal. If the host has not closed, regional broadcasters' hesitation is not slowness but a rational response to a price that does not match the market.

For Vietnam's delegation, this is worth noting. The target of four to six golds and a top-20 finish is a sporting target. But for that target to be seen, another condition is needed: images must get on air. A gold medal won in silence has a very different media value from one broadcast live in prime time. In sport, presence on screen is part of the achievement.

Two events, one September window

There is a detail that individual reports rarely connect: the calendars overlap.

Vietnam play on September 26 in Bandung, face Thailand three days later, and meet Pakistan on October 2 in Jakarta. Asiad 20 runs from September 19 to October 4. The two events sit almost entirely on top of each other in the same time window.

For a broadcaster, this is a resource-allocation problem. One budget, one technical team, the same prime-time slots, serving two events at once. Advertising revenue across those two weeks is finite. Buy both, and the risk is a double loss. Buy only one, and you must choose which. When forced to choose, broadcasters usually pick the commercially safer one and drop the other with an apology.

What is rarely said is that two overlapping events reduce each other's value. A tournament broadcast with no rival for attention commands a higher price. At the same moment, attention is split in two, and each side earns less. This is why a global seller has more reason to hold out for a high price, and a regional buyer has more reason to wait.

Sub-licensing: the familiar escape route

Within that picture there is one positive signal. The negotiating broadcaster expects to redistribute the rights to domestic television units. This is a familiar industry mechanism: one buyer, many broadcasters, costs spread out, and audiences given more options.

This mechanism solves two things. It reduces the financial burden on the first buyer, because most of the cost is recovered through redistribution contracts. And it gives the audience's expectation of free viewing a chance to materialise, instead of being funnelled entirely into a paywall.

But sub-licensing has limits. It works only when the event is attractive enough for multiple parties to want it. For a football tournament with the national team, that is usually true. For a multi-sport Games with 469 events, it is far harder, because most events do not have enough viewers to resell.

The mistake in framing the question

In many cafe conversations and online, the rights story is told along a familiar line: Vietnamese broadcasters are slow, Vietnamese broadcasters are stingy, Vietnamese broadcasters do not care about the audience. That framing is easy to hear, easy to spread, and convenient for assigning blame.

But when an entire region has not bought, an explanation placed on broadcasters alone no longer holds. If this were one broadcaster's problem, we would see other countries already having signed, with only Vietnam missing the beat. The data shows the opposite: no entity in Southeast Asia owns the rights.

Another common reading needs correcting too. Many assume that because the team just won, coverage must obviously be free, as compensation for the emotion the team delivers. That emotion is real, and I understand it better than most, having stood on the Bach Dang pavement that night. But rights are a commercial contract, not a broadcaster's moral obligation. Mixing the two sends the debate in the wrong direction, and when it goes the wrong way, the ultimate loser is still the audience.

The blind spot lies elsewhere: fans are comparing against the past, while the market has changed its seller. When the seller is a global body with global pricing, memories of soft regional deals no longer work as a yardstick. Deep memory can provide current evidence, but it must be the right kind. Comparing an old regional contract with today's global package is comparing two different things.

What needs verification before concluding

Two details in the source should not be treated as certain, and readers should keep a little scepticism here.

First is the name and organising status of the regional football tournament. A traditional regional competition is usually run by the regional federation, so attaching a global body's name and describing it as the organiser is unusual. If accurate, it is a systemic change with heavy consequences. If it is a loose label, every price conclusion shifts with it. This detail needs cross-checking against official sources before being used as a basis.

Second is the appearance of a South Asian team in the fixture list of a competition branded as Southeast Asian. It could be an invited team in an expanded format, or it could be a compilation error. For anyone in this trade, that is the kind of detail you ask about three times before writing.

I raise these not to dismiss the source, but for a very specific professional reason. If details needing verification are skipped, a very firm conclusion gets built on an uncertain foundation. And when the foundation shakes, the first thing to collapse is the reader's trust.

Who carries the risk

Seen as a whole, risk is being distributed unevenly.

For fans, the risk is no images. Anyone who has sat on a pavement listening to portable speakers knows that feeling: the team plays, and the screen is dark.

For broadcasters, the risk is buying high and failing to recover, or not buying and being seen as the outlet that abandoned the audience.

For the delegation, the risk is medals won that nobody sees, eroding the reach of the achievement.

For the seller, the only risk is holding inventory for another cycle. Yet almost all public pressure lands on those closest to the audience.

That is a structure worth pondering: the party that created the repricing sits far away, while the party responsible for explaining it sits close by. This explains why the story is easily mis-told, and why fans tend to blame the wrong party.

What comes next

From the perspective of someone who follows the team, I watch internal signals rather than external rumours. For the national team, the credible signal is that the training plan is finalised and the coaching staff is stable. For the broadcasting market, the credible signal is not a "close" headline but a contract with a specific number.

While that line is missing, the sensible preparation is a fallback. News bulletins, highlights, delayed broadcasts — these are the paths the industry still uses when live rights are not closed in time. They cannot replace the feeling of watching live, but at least they keep the team's story from being forced into silence.

For those of us in the trade, connecting emotionally with the audience starts with listening to their echoes, not with repeating whatever sounds easiest. The echo this time is clear: they want to watch. Our job is to tell them why that is currently hard, rather than hand them a name to blame.

Rights are not the business of one broadcaster, nor of one tournament. They are the business of a region learning to negotiate a new price, and of a generation of fans learning to wait for a negotiation they are not seated at.

One day a broadcaster will sign. There will be headlines, thanks, and praise in the comments. What I hope for more is a question retained in every professional's mind: next time, when the price climbs another notch, will this region buy country by country, or sit down as a bloc and negotiate like a genuine market?