For many years, Vietnamese football fans who wanted a free Premier League stream with local commentary knew exactly where to go.
‘Xoi Lac TV’ and its sister sites offered pirated streams featuring all major leagues, switching to new domains each time a blocking order caught up with the last one.
For the operators involved, these free streams became serious business. Betting banners were shown with every match and generated substantial revenue. That lucrative business model also drew Vietnam’s cybercrime police, who raided the operation in February and charged 30 people a month later.
However, that was only the opening chapter in a story that carries international weight today. Last week, police in Hung Yen province closed their investigation and asked prosecutors to charge 74 people.
Massive Piracy Operation with its Own Commentators
The investigation’s conclusion, as reported by Dan Tri and VnExpress, describes two linked piracy operations.
The first pirate site, ’90 Phut’, was founded in late 2018. Investigators say Hanoi technology entrepreneur Pham Nguyen Dung put up the money, programmer Nguyen Cong Dinh wrote the code, and the two split the profits.
When the operation was shut down in February, it ran XoilacTV, 90PhutTV, VeboTV, ThapcamTV, BanhkhucTV and CakeoTV, while Dinh also ran the ‘Cakhia’ network with another defendant.
The 74 suspects are allegedly part of the operation’s staff. This includes more than 30 Vietnamese commentators who were paid 200,000 to 500,000 dong per match, roughly $8 to $20. The other defendants managed servers, streams and the financial side.
The commentary was the brand, and its best-known voices used names such as ‘Batman’ and ‘Scarecrow’. ‘Batman’, it turned out, was Dinh himself, who investigators say made more than 12 billion dong, roughly $470,000, from the operation.
The investigation also found that the sites streamed 1,529 matches without permission, infringing the rights of the Premier League and local broadcasters, while generating revenue from betting brands including 8XBET, LU88, Man88 and HBET.
Police estimate that these ads brought in more than 130 billion dong, roughly $5 million, between April 2025 and January 2026. Rightsholders, meanwhile, claim losses that are much higher.
Vietnam’s pay TV service K+ preliminarily estimates its losses at more than $83 million, and the Premier League, which licenses its rights to K+ for Vietnam, at more than $4.6 million. The figures have yet to be confirmed at an eventual trial.
Gambling Charges Carry the Weight
The 74 defendants face a variety of charges, including copyright infringement, organizing gambling, gambling, and distributing obscene material. Fifty-one, including Dung and Dinh, are recommended for prosecution on both the copyright and organizing gambling counts.
The sites are known for piracy, but the gambling charges carry more weight. Vietnam’s Penal Code caps copyright infringement at three years in prison, no matter how profitable it is. Meanwhile, organizing gambling as a professional operation carries up to ten years in prison.
This means that the betting ads, which are illegal in Vietnam, could make up the bulk of the sentences. For now, however, nothing is final yet.
In Vietnam, police close an investigation with a written conclusion and a proposal to prosecute, which is the stage this case is at now. The prosecution now has up to 30 days to indict, send the file back for more work, or drop the case.
Thanks From London, Pressure From Washington
The ‘Xoi Lac’ crackdown has not gone unnoticed outside of the country’s borders. In May, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security announced that the British Embassy in Hanoi had sent a letter thanking it for the takedown. According to the ministry, the letter praised the enforcement effort that protected copyright holders.
Washington was not immediately convinced. At the end of April, the U.S. Trade Representative designated Vietnam a ‘Priority Foreign Country’ over its failure to tackle online piracy, the first country to receive that label in thirteen years.
A month later, USTR opened a formal Section 301 investigation into Vietnam’s intellectual property enforcement, a process that can end in widely feared tariffs. USTR said that Vietnam has taken some steps, but added that infringement “continues to impair the competitive position of U.S. innovators and creators.”
While the original Xoi Lac raids came weeks before the USTR’s decision, Vietnam is now using it as a defense, mentioning it in tandem with the takedowns of Rophim and Y2Mate in its July response to the investigation, asking to be taken off the priority list.
Vietnam’s response also cited the HiAnime case. The Ministry of Public Security only announced criminal proceedings against seven HiAnime suspects on July 2, the same day Vietnam filed its rebuttal in Washington.
Whether the 74-defendant recommendation is in any way influenced by the international pressure is unknown. It is now up to the prosecutor to decide what steps to take next. Meanwhile, a search for ‘xoi lac’ and its related brands still returns a long list of copycats, whose operators are unknown.
