Sepak Takraw ASIAD Gold: One Team of Three, Two Reward Tiers Apart by Nearly 1.7 Billion VND

20 million VND per month. That is the figure a sepak takraw athlete who wins an ASIAD gold medal receives, paid continuously until the next Asian Games closes. Multiplied by the 48 months of a Games cycle, that money becomes 960 million VND.

But if that athlete is on the Hanoi payroll, the monthly figure is no longer 20 million. It is 33.5 million. And if she is one of the two Hanoi athletes on the women's sepak takraw team that just took gold at ASIAD 20 in Nagoya, her cumulative income from the state budget and the municipal budget can reach nearly 3 billion VND for a single gold medal.

The third teammate, the one not on the capital's payroll, receives less than half of that.

This is not the story of a match. It is the story of a spreadsheet, and of how a sporting system prices victory — not on the court, but on paper.

I have followed the Asian Games for more than three decades, in various roles: host, commentator, and more recently data analyst. Based on my experience watching matches and Games, one thing always catches my attention: after every gold medal, there are always two parallel stories. The first takes place on the court and lasts a few hours. The second takes place on documents and lasts for years.

ASIAD 20 was held in Nagoya, Japan. For sepak takraw — the Southeast Asian sport that uses the feet, knees, shoulders and head to send a woven plastic ball over a net — this is one of the most prestigious arenas of the cycle. Vietnam's women's sepak takraw team won gold, and immediately after the final whistle, the administrative machine started running.

One thing must be made clear at once: this is not badminton. Sepak takraw is governed by ISTAF and ASTAF, contested under the umbrella of the Olympic Council of Asia, and has nothing to do with the Badminton World Federation. I say this not to classify for fun, but because anyone who reads this story through the eyes of a badminton reporter will miss its real structure: here, the object of analysis is not the shuttle, but the money flow.

The reward framework is set by the Government's Decree 349/2026/ND-CP. Under it, an ASIAD gold medal brings the athlete 280 million VND in achievement bonus, plus a special preferential allowance of 20 million VND per month, extended until the next Games. Added together, each athlete receives about 1.24 billion VND from the central budget. Multiplied by the three team members, the total is about 3.72 billion VND — the figure the media shorthand calls 'nearly 4 billion'.

But that is only the first tier.

At the second tier, Resolution 82/2026/NQ-HDND of the Hanoi People's Council adds a bonus of 140 million VND for each gold medalist, plus a special preferential allowance of 33.5 million VND per month. Multiplied by 48 months, this comes to about 1.608 billion VND for each Hanoi athlete.

And this is where the story becomes interesting.

Vietnam's women's sepak takraw team has three athletes, but only two are on the Hanoi payroll. The same gold medal, the same final, the same national anthem, and three women walk out of the arena with three completely different incomes.

Nguyen Thi Thu Trang and Nguyen Thi Khanh Ly are the two names confirmed to be on the Hanoi payroll. The third is not named. In an administrative report, that silence is usually not accidental. It reflects an organizational fact: the third athlete is not on the capital's payroll, and therefore does not receive the municipal tier of the reward.

Let us do the concrete arithmetic, because this is the kind of story where emotion usually drowns out numbers.

A Hanoi athlete receives 1.24 billion VND from the central budget, plus 1.748 billion VND from the city — of which 140 million is the bonus and 1.608 billion is the special allowance. The total is nearly 2.99 billion VND. The teammate not on Hanoi's payroll receives 1.24 billion VND. The gap between the two is roughly 1.75 billion VND.

For the two Hanoi athletes, the central budget spends 2.48 billion VND and the municipal budget spends 3.496 billion VND. Adding the third athlete's share, the total state and municipal reward package for the team of three exceeds 8 billion VND, excluding outside payments.

Coach Hoang Thi Thai Xuan, who directly guided this gold medal, is entitled to 50% of an athlete's entitlement. Calculated on the central-budget share, her amount is roughly 620 million VND. This is a detail rarely itemized in the press, and it shows that Vietnam's reward system has tied the welfare of the direct coach to the results of the pupil — a fairly sophisticated incentive-alignment mechanism, worth acknowledging.

People buy athletes with data, but they win championships with the things data cannot touch. In this case, the thing data cannot touch is precisely the 50% share for the teacher — a number that appears in no performance table, yet decides whether a coach stays in the profession.

There is also a 'hot bonus' of 200 million VND from the delegation, and rewards from the federation and sponsors that have not been quantified. Both fall outside the figures above.

The 'nearly 4 billion' figure reported by the media is accurate only for the central-budget portion granted to the whole team. It does not reflect each athlete's true total income, and it unintentionally conceals the biggest gap in the story: the gap between the two Hanoi athletes and the one left out.

From a policy standpoint, this two-tier architecture is not necessarily wrong. A locality that wants to retain good athletes must spend money. Hanoi, as the country's largest sports center, has the resources to do so. But the consequence is that, within a single national team, an athlete's benefits depend on where their sporting registration is filed, not on their actual contribution on the court.

I have seen the same thing in many other sports. In individual combat sports, the gap between an athlete from a well-funded province and one from a poor province can decide an entire career. Sepak takraw is simply the clearest version of a logic that has long existed in Vietnamese sport: the locality that pays more keeps the best people, and the national reward becomes the floor rather than the deciding factor.

To understand why this structure matters, one must look at history. For decades, rewards for Vietnamese athletes came mainly from the central budget, at fixed and low levels. As provinces began competing to attract sporting talent, they created their own reward policies, gradually forming a two-tier system like today's. Decree 349/2026 at the central level and Resolution 82/2026 at the Hanoi level are the two newest links in that process. This means that behind every gold medal there is a competition between localities that is never mentioned. That competition does not take place on the sepak takraw court; it takes place in the sessions of people's councils.

This structure must be placed in a regional context. Sepak takraw is a sport in which Southeast Asia holds absolute dominance on the continental stage. Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and Laos are the traditional powers of the discipline. A Vietnamese ASIAD gold, therefore, is not merely an individual achievement — it is a sign that Vietnam has squeezed into the leading group of a sport its neighbors invest in very heavily. But the reward report provides no data whatsoever on opponents, on the score, or on the quality of the playing surface. It speaks only of money.

Financially, the 20 million VND monthly allowance is anchored to 'the next Games'. This is a mechanism that ties the value of the reward to the calendar, not to a fixed sum. Its real value depends on when the next Games take place. If the cycle runs longer than 48 months, the athlete benefits. If the budget is cut or the policy is adjusted midway, the money becomes uncertain.

A gold medal is priced with a promise lasting four years, and the value of that promise depends on the budget of the next four years — not on the moment the athlete sends the ball over the net.

Data is a new language, and I am fortunate to be its translator. But when translating a reward schedule, the translator must be honest even about the numbers no one wants to read aloud.

Look at the overall structure. The central budget spends 3.72 billion VND on three athletes. The Hanoi budget spends 3.496 billion VND on two athletes. That is more than 7.2 billion VND of taxpayer money in total, not counting 620 million VND for the coach and 200 million VND in hot bonuses. The real figure, fully added up, far exceeds the 'nearly 4 billion' headline the reader sees.

What is worth noting is that this structure is not unique. It is the general model of Vietnamese sport: a national reward tier as the floor, and a local reward tier as the visible part. The problem only becomes clear when a national team gathers athletes from localities with different spending levels — and the women's sepak takraw team, with three members from two payroll sources, is a perfect example.

The failure to name the third athlete may stem from many reasons. It could simply be that the report focused on the two athletes on the local payroll, because Hanoi readers care more about them. But it could also be a sign that the third athlete has no equivalent media representation, no equivalent sponsoring agency to vouch for her. In either case, the result is the same: the person who contributed equivalent effort but receives a smaller reward is also mentioned less.

There is a question the report does not answer, and which perhaps no one wants to answer in print: will Hanoi's resolution become a model for other provinces and cities? If so, the gap between athletes in rich and poor localities will widen further. If not, Hanoi will continue to be the place that draws sporting talent, and other provinces will suffer the loss of their people.

For the athletes, this reward carries different practical meaning depending on family circumstances. For a young athlete just past twenty, nearly 3 billion VND is a fortune enough to buy a home and stabilize her life. For an athlete with a family, it compensates for years of training below the average income. But for the third member of the team, the figure of 1.24 billion VND — though still large — is not enough to produce a similar leap.

What is worth noting is that the report does not mention the score, the opponents, or any match detail at all. This is characteristic of the administrative news genre: it exists to announce entitlements, not to recount the match. For readers interested only in the numbers, that is not a problem. But for a sport that wants to develop sustainably, speaking only of money and never of how one wins is an imbalance that needs to be recognized.

Here I want to pose a contrarian question. The media is celebrating the 'nearly 4 billion' figure as a sign that Vietnamese sport has learned to value victory. But if one reads the structure carefully, one finds almost the opposite: this system rewards athletes based on where they belong more than on what they do.

The third teammate trained under the same regimen, bore the same load, ate the same diet, and played the same final. But because she does not hold a Hanoi sporting registration, she receives nearly 1.75 billion VND less. If someone says that is normal because each locality has its own policy, I respectfully disagree. Within a national team, the national reward must be a fair floor for every member; the local reward should be an addition, not the factor that decides the difference.

Let me be clear: I cast no doubt on the two Hanoi athletes. They deserve every đồng. The problem lies in the design, not in the people. My sharpness is directed at the system, not at any individual.

Another paradox: the 20 million monthly allowance extended to the next Games sounds very generous, but it turns the reward into an income stream dependent on the political-sporting cycle. An athlete cannot make long-term financial plans based on a figure that can change by decree. This is the kind of risk that professional sports analysts often overlook, because it is not on the court.

And there is one more data detail. The information on the venue and date of ASIAD 20 in Nagoya, as of the time of this article, still needs to be cross-checked against the official records of the Olympic Council of Asia. I raise this not to doubt the achievement, but to keep the principle of the trade: any figure that cannot be verified must be stated plainly as unverified.

The night I was cut off air in 2026 taught me: right and wrong can wait, questions cannot.

I have seen champions whose names no one remembers, and losers whose faces the whole country remembers. Public attention is not proportional to achievement. It is proportional to how well the story is told. And in this case, the story told is the story of money.

The sepak takraw ASIAD gold is a real achievement. Three women did something that the entire Southeast Asian sporting world knows is hard. But the way we price that achievement is telling a different story — about a system that has not yet separated honoring people from operating a machine.

The stadium has no spectators, but the ball still tells a speaking story. The right question is not whether nearly 4 billion is a lot. The right question is: when three people stand together on the highest podium, why do two walk down with nearly 3 billion, while the third walks down with only 1.24 billion?