Eleven people who ran the pirate football site Bún Chả TV are going to prison in Vietnam. On 27 October 2026 the People’s Court of Bac Ninh City convicted 14 defendants of copyright infringement for streaming Premier League and Champions League matches without a licence. Eleven received prison terms of 8 to 12 months, while three commentators got suspended sentences. The Premier League publicly welcomed the verdict this week, and TorrentFreak reported the case on 5 November.
What Bún Chả TV was
Bún Chả TV (also written Buncha TV) was a free football streaming site aimed at Vietnamese fans. It showed live matches from the Premier League and the Champions League with its own Vietnamese-language commentary.
According to police figures cited by TorrentFreak, the site drew hundreds of thousands of visits a day and streamed more than 150,000 matches. Investigators said it earned over 20 billion dong (roughly $760,000) mainly from betting and gambling ads and from redirecting visitors to illegal gambling sites. The money did not come from subscriptions: like most pirate sports sites, it was free to watch and paid for by gambling advertisers.
The case started with coordinated raids on 15 May 2026, when police from several provinces searched homes and offices and seized 38 computers and 42 phones.
The sentences
All 14 defendants were tried under Article 225 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, which covers infringement of copyright and related rights. Vietnamese media reported that they admitted the charges and cooperated with investigators. The court handed down:
- 12 months in prison for four people, including the heads of content, programming and operations;
- 10 months for five defendants;
- 8 months for two defendants;
- 10 months suspended, with 12 months of probation, for three commentators.
In total, the eleven jailed defendants received 9 years and 6 months. According to Thị trường Tài chính Tiền tệ, the court also fined the group a combined 345 million dong, ordered the equipment used to be confiscated and the illegal profits recovered. Investigators put the personal gains of the 14 at about 2.4 billion dong. The ruling is a first-instance verdict and can still be appealed within 15 days.
One name is missing from the list. The indictment, reported by CafeF, describes Bùi Bá Hiến, director of a company called S24, as the person who set up the site and hired the team. He was not among the people sentenced. A man with the same name, the boss of an esports company, has been wanted by police since he allegedly fled in May, but it has not been confirmed that they are the same person.
Why the Premier League cares
Stefan Sergot, the Premier League’s Director of Legal and Enforcement, welcomed the strict verdicts and thanked the Vietnamese authorities. He said that anyone involved in distributing the league’s matches without permission now faces serious criminal consequences, and that the league will keep working with local partners to find and shut down illegal streams.
The timing matters. Vietnam is under heavy pressure from the United States, which opened a Section 301 trade investigation into the country’s online piracy in May 2026. A decision is due by 29 November and could lead to tariffs. Since then Vietnam has moved from simply blocking domains to criminal prosecutions: the operators of the anime site HiAnime were indicted in October, and a separate case targets dozens of people behind the Xoi Lac TV sports streaming network.
What it means for users
Viewers were not charged in this case; the court went after the people who built, ran and promoted the site. Still, there are a few things worth knowing:
- Commentators are now a target. Three of the 14 defendants were commentators, and one of them got a full prison term. Talking over a pirate stream is treated as part of the operation.
- Free sports sites run on gambling money. Bún Chả TV earned most of its income from betting ads and redirects. These ads are one of the main sources of scams and malware on pirate streaming sites, so an ad blocker is essential.
- Expect clones. When a popular site closes, copies with similar names appear fast and are often far riskier than the original. Check which sites are really online on our status board before trusting a new domain.
What happens next
The defendants can appeal the first-instance ruling. More trials are coming, including the Xoi Lac TV case and the HiAnime prosecution, while the USTR decision at the end of November will show whether Washington thinks Vietnam’s crackdown goes far enough. Under Vietnamese law, this kind of copyright offence can carry up to three years in prison, so future sentences could be heavier.
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