In 2018, the great achievements of the Vietnam U23 men's national soccer team in Changzhou created an unprecedented phenomenon on social networks.

After that, a series of records of viewers were set and then broken.

More recently, there were 1 million concurrent viewers on YouTube during the great battle between Vietnam and Thailand U23 within the frame of the 2020 Asian U23 qualifier.

However, because of concerns about control over the transmission line quality and outrageous comments, the following tournaments will no longer be broadcast on the internet.

This broadcasting change occurred when Covid-19 and social distancing forced Vietnamese people stay at home and log in social networks with devices. Some television companies have begun intensifying the broadcasting on social network platforms.

The Vietnam National Television (VTV) was the pioneer with three YouTube channels running at the same time. No official figure about the number of subscribers has been revealed, but sources said VTV’s livestreams now attract thousands of viewers. Meanwhile, reposted news gets hundreds of thousands of views.

VTV began livestreaming trials in mid-April 2020, commencing with morning and noon bulletins. To date, the national television channel has tried all time frames of the day with the total live broadcasting time on YouTube reaching 8-9 hours a day.

Other television channels have followed VTV in the livestream trend. Hanoi Television, for example, has livestreamed news reports at 6.30 pm daily, while the Vietnam News Agency Television also has livestreams on YouTube lasting more than 10 hours on unfixed days.

TV livestreams are not new. Before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, the US, Russian and British television channels all had livestreaming activities, at the same time with updated newsletters.

In Vietnam, television channels all had websites and apps, live broadcasting 24/7 channels. However, the quality of the transmission line was not unsatisfactory. The shifting to livestream on social network platforms has to some extent fixed the problem.

Livestreaming is believed to be an inevitable trend all over the globe. All the activities in daily life, from goods sales to health examinations from a distance have been intensified on social network platforms.

The latest report of Adsota showed that Vietnam has 65 million internet users, including 55 million social network users.

Nielsen said that Vietnam would have 15 million Z Gen people by 2025 and this would be the factor leading to a boom of livestream viewers in the future.

Another report showed that Vietnam has 13.8 million pay-TV subscribers. Pay-TVs are facing stiff competition from cross-border platforms such as iQIYI and Netflix. 

Trong Dat

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