K+ has announced it will stop operations in Vietnam from January 2026, marking the end of a 16-year journey shaped by rigid strategies and eroded by rampant piracy.
K+’s decision to stop providing pay-TV services in Vietnam after 16 years is less a shock and more an inevitable result of poor strategic adaptation and a market crippled by rampant copyright infringement.
VSTV announces K+ will shut down pay-TV services in Vietnam starting January 1, 2026.
On December 8, Vietnam Satellite Digital Television (VSTV) released a statement:
“Starting January 1, 2026, we will cease providing pay-TV services under the K+ brand in Vietnam. K+ set-top boxes and satellite dishes will still receive 10 VTV channels and other free-to-air local channels. Customers with active subscriptions beyond December 31, 2025, may request refunds at https://hoantien.kplus.vn by December 31, 2025. All verifications and refunds will be completed in January 2026. Our customer service team remains available at 1900 1592 until January 31, 2026.”
The message continued with a nostalgic farewell:
“For over 16 years, K+ has been part of Vietnamese households. Generations of fans joined us in watching world-class Premier League matches, unforgettable sporting moments, and deeply emotional cinematic experiences. To all our loyal customers: thank you for trusting and journeying with us. The memories of those epic games and shared moments of joy will forever remain our pride.”
All-in on Premier League, but no ecosystem
From day one, K+ positioned itself as the home of the Premier League, relying heavily - almost entirely - on owning the broadcasting rights to the world’s most expensive football league.
This worked for a while. But it became the company’s blind spot.
K+ failed to adapt as the market shifted. Its core business model depended on traditional satellite subscriptions, which required fixed hardware, installation, maintenance fees, and offered limited flexibility.
As the market rapidly transitioned to over-the-top (OTT) streaming, audiences moved from passive to on-demand viewing.
K+ was too slow. Its mobile app arrived late, lacked innovation, and couldn’t overcome its structural disadvantages: high prices and an outdated user experience.
Compounding this was a second strategic mistake: K+ failed to build a broader content ecosystem.
While competitors like FPT Play, VieON, and Netflix invested in exclusive series, entertainment shows and co-produced content, K+ remained football-centric, with minimal investment in original programming.
Its user base shrank to a narrow niche of hardcore football fans - many of whom also shifted habits, preferring online streams to traditional TV.
As younger audiences stopped watching football on scheduled broadcasts, K+ struggled to reposition itself as a true digital platform.
The reliance on subscription revenue became unsustainable, especially with Premier League rights costing tens of millions of USD per season.
Copyright piracy: The fatal blow
If slow digital transformation weakened K+, piracy delivered the knockout.
For years, Premier League matches aired on K+ were illegally streamed across social media, websites, pirate IPTV apps - even on international platforms.
A single game could be pirated in hundreds of free streams, with low latency and easy access - while legal K+ users had to pay high fees for official access.
The economic gap between “free illegal” and “paid legal” became so wide that it stopped being an issue of ethics and turned into simple economics.
Vietnam, with nearly 100 million people, only had a few hundred thousand subscribers paying to watch licensed football.
That math doesn’t work when licensing costs run into the tens of millions of USD annually.
Illegal platforms didn’t pay for content, yet profited from unauthorized ads and used relay tech to bypass K+’s anti-piracy tools, reaching millions of viewers.
Despite repeated pleas for government support and technological interventions, K+ couldn’t stem the tide.
On many Premier League weekends, pirated streams outnumbered official viewership many times over.
This created a vicious cycle: K+ paid for exclusive rights, failed to recover costs, raised prices to survive, driving even more users to piracy.
Add to that a shrinking advertising market, and K+ had no fallback revenue.
Piracy didn’t just rob K+ of profit - it distorted the entire pay-TV market.
When free illegal viewing becomes the norm, legitimate models collapse.
This leaves no incentive for long-term investment in high-quality content, dragging the entire industry into stagnation.
K+ did not collapse due to bad content, but because it couldn’t survive an uneven economic battle against lawless platforms with zero costs.
Strategic mistakes slowed K+’s digital transition, but piracy ultimately dealt the final blow.
Falling behind in the OTT era
As OTT platforms exploded, K+ fell behind.
Modern viewers don’t want to be tied to a set-top box, fixed schedules or installation fees.
They want flexibility - streaming on phones, tablets, smart TVs, watching anytime, skipping or replaying scenes, all under affordable, multi-content packages.
K+ failed to provide this - or delivered it too late and too clumsily.
Its app existed but couldn’t compete with platforms like FPT Play or VieON in terms of content, usability or price.
At the very moment the market demanded radical reinvention, K+ continued investing in its aging satellite model.
It still believed exclusive Premier League content would carry it forward.
But in an age of piracy and shifting habits, even that exclusive content lost its power.
A brand that missed the digital curve
K+’s exit is not just the fall of a satellite TV brand. It’s a lesson in failing to adapt to the digital content economy.
Here was a brand with one of the world’s most valuable content rights - yet unable to build a sustainable digital ecosystem.
It couldn’t protect its value from piracy, nor evolve fast enough to meet new consumer behavior.
Its downfall is a wake-up call for the entire pay-TV industry.
Premium content alone won’t save a business.
What’s needed are flexible models, compelling user experiences, diversified revenue streams, and systems that extend beyond a football match.
Vietnam’s copyright market can only grow when piracy is tackled and providers offer value that’s better than “free.”
K+ leaves the game - quietly, and with regret.
But the legacy of its rise and fall will shape how Vietnam’s television market navigates the digital age ahead.
Vietnamnet.vn
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