The Money Behind Vietnam's Tennis Nets

On the night of March 14, the Phu Tho Tennis Centre closed after the men's singles semifinal ended in the second set. The stands were not even a third full. The floodlights were still on, the chair umpire still sat in the high chair, but the host country's number one player had already walked into the corridor with an unzipped bag. He retired in the fourth game of the second set. The report listed "wrist injury" as the reason. Three weeks earlier, this same player had gone a full three sets in 38-degree heat at a Challenger event in Thailand without calling for medical attention once.

I sat in the fifth row, noting the start time, the end time, and the prize money of both matches, then placed them side by side. The distance between the two numbers was not about skill. It was about the money that had moved before the umpire called the first game.

One tournament, two balance sheets

People often say Vietnamese tennis lacks money. That is half true. The industry does not lack money; it lacks books. Over the past year, the number of professional and semi-professional tennis tournaments held in the country has multiplied compared to 2026. Every weekend, in some province, there is an open, a corporate event, a junior tournament. Sponsors arrive, money comes in, prize money is handed out, and almost no one asks where the rest went.

I use benchmarks for comparison. In 2026, the total prize pool of the US Open reached about 75 million USD, with the men's singles champion receiving 3.6 million USD. Wimbledon that same year had a total prize pool of about 50 million pounds. The Australian Open exceeded 86 million Australian dollars. The French Open stood at about 53.5 million euros. These are public figures, published in writing before the tournament begins. An entire international accounting system stands behind a Grand Slam.

On the other side, a mid-tier ATP Challenger has a total prize pool of a few hundred thousand USD. An ITF World Tennis Tour event may have only a few tens of thousands of USD. That money is divided by round, and a player only receives the portion corresponding to the round where they stopped. That sounds clear. But when a domestic tournament in Vietnam announces a "total prize value", very few people check whether that money is actually paid in full, on time, and to the right recipient.

Since the 2026 season, I no longer watch tennis tournaments as matches, but as balance sheets of money flows. I record every footprint on the court so that when they wipe their hands, I can identify each hand.

The first crack

The crack was not in the match. It was in the sponsorship registration.

I started with a simple question: a domestic tournament with an announced total prize value of 800 million dong—how much was actually spent? I gathered three independent sources. First, the press release issued by the organisers to journalists. Second, a soft-copy sponsorship contract that a marketing staffer sent me after weeks of persuasion, bearing a red seal and a serial number. Third, cross-checked against the internal transfer list of the organising entity.

The three sources matched on one point: total committed sponsorship was 1.6 billion dong. Total money actually spent on prizes, per the reconciliation, was 420 million dong. The difference of more than one billion dong was allocated to familiar categories: "organising costs", "media", "reception", "logistics". None of those categories is illegal. But none of them shows where the money actually went.

They call it a two-price contract; I call it the first lesson on my home court.

Two-price contracts, the tennis version

In football, the two-price contract appears in the transfer market: one version declared to the regulator, one real value. In tennis, it is more subtle because it is less scrutinised. A player signs a personal sponsorship deal with a brand, including performance bonuses. Performance depends on how many rounds the player advances. And the number of rounds, at a domestic tournament, can be arranged in advance through wild cards and the draw.

I tracked a group of seven players over two seasons. For each, I recorded wins, mid-match retirements, medical timeouts, and prize money received. The result: three of the seven had abnormally high mid-match retirement rates compared to their international baseline. They won more in the first round, then retired in the later round—precisely when the prize money changed. There is no direct evidence of fixing. But the pattern repeated across two seasons, at three different tournaments.

I do not trust intuition; I trust the half-cent discrepancy in a statement.

Wild cards: the tournament's back door

A wild card is a legitimate tool of every tennis tournament in the world. Organisers have the right to hand a spot to a player who lacks the ranking to enter the main draw, to boost the event's appeal. At Grand Slams, the number of wild cards is clearly regulated and published. At many domestic events, that number is far murkier.

At one tournament I tracked, the organisers gave maximum wild cards to four young players from the owning entity. All four reached the main draw, and all four had advertising contracts with a domestic brand—the same brand that was a silver sponsor of the tournament. A closed circle: the sponsor puts money into the event, the event gives spots to players, the players advertise for the sponsor, and the prize money is withdrawn from the event's own fund. None of this breaks any rule. But the interests of the player, the tournament, and the sponsor are blended to the point where no one remains the checker.

The money of the young

What drew my attention most was the reverse money flow. Not from sponsor to player, but from player's family into the system.

Tennis academies in Vietnam mostly charge tuition by course. A young player who wants to compete on the ITF World Tennis Tour must cover entry fees, travel, hotels, and meals. A week of competition abroad can cost tens of millions of dong, while the prize money for the first round of a low-tier event may not cover the hotel. That means the system only allows families with money to send their children into the international arena. Those without money stay home. Those who stay home have no ranking. Those with no ranking cannot enter the main draw of bigger events.

This, I believe, is a deeper problem than a few anomalous retirements. A sport whose entry gate depends on parents' wallets will self-select by the wrong criteria. Talent is eliminated from the outer rounds; opportunity stays with whoever pays the fee.

The ghost season of 2026 taught me one thing: when the media spotlight turns away, the money still moves quietly into the pockets of those in power. Vietnamese tennis has no pandemic large enough to empty the stands entirely, but it has countless small, late-night, sparsely attended tournaments—and those are precisely the ideal conditions for ledgers no one scrutinises.

The contrarian angle: the reasonable part of what I have recorded

The easiest trap in long-term investigation is seeing conspiracies everywhere. I force myself to stop here and ask the reverse question.

First, most domestic tennis tournament organisers make no profit. Sponsorship money is usually only enough to cover court rental, floodlights, umpires, balls, water, and security. The difference I call "unclear destination" may simply be under-accounted costs—an accounting problem, not a moral one. If organisers had proper accountants, those discrepancies would vanish on their own.

Second, tennis is not football. It has no international bookmaker pouring billions into lower-tier domestic matches. In Vietnamese tournaments, the betting volume large enough to fix a match is very small, close to zero for junior events. So if there are anomalies, the cause usually lies elsewhere: results to qualify for personal sponsorship, ranking to gain wild cards, or simply a demand from whoever pays for the playing spot.

Third, players retire for real injuries. Wrist, shoulder, elbow, knee—those are the most common injuries in a racket sport played on hard courts. A player choosing to retire at a small event to preserve energy for a bigger one is a wholly legitimate strategy, used by many top players every season.

Saying this does not make me feel safer. It makes the problem clearer: when information is opaque, both the honest and the ill-intentioned hide behind the same excuse. "Injury" becomes the safe answer to every hard question. And a tennis scene without public data on injuries, actual prize money received, or wild cards will always leave gaps that no one is obliged to fill.

Takeaway

If three confirming sources and a serial-numbered statement cannot answer the question "where did the money go", then the problem is not confined to any single tournament. It lies in the fact that we have grown used to no one having to answer.

Vietnamese tennis does not need another tournament. It needs a public register: every event publishing total sponsorship received, total prize money actually paid, the list of wild cards with reasons, and costs broken down by category. That is not a matter of morality; it is a matter of accounting. When the court is lit, people have fewer chances to wipe their hands. And when there is room for data, real names will be forced into view instead of hidden behind an all-too-familiar injury excuse.