Vietnamese Billiards: The Economics Behind the Table Lights

The final ended at 22:47. The arena seats were being stacked row by row, the lights above the table dimming, yet three men were still talking in the corridor behind the hall. One was a coach. One represented a sponsor. The third held a thin folder pinched between two fingers and never once opened it in twenty minutes. None of the three had just lifted the trophy. But if you want to know how next season will unfold, you have to watch this group.

I have followed Vietnamese billiards long enough to notice a pattern: the spotlight always falls in the wrong place. People compete to count trophies, count semi-final appearances, count elegant shots. Money — the thing that decides who gets to play, who trains enough hours, who flies to Europe for a tournament — sits on another floor, where no camera points.

An invisible contract only surfaces when you count every number instead of listening to every promise. I remind myself of that line each time I sit down with a folder of billiards paperwork. In this major-tournament season, as international events pile up, that folder grows faster than in any previous year.

Two streams, one billiards scene

Vietnamese billiards exists as two almost separate rivers. The first is carom three-cushion — a discipline where Vietnam has secured its standing in Asia and on the world map for more than a decade. The second is pool, where Vietnamese players keep appearing at Asian and world events but where no competition system is dense enough to sustain a full career.

In carom three-cushion, names such as Trần Quyết Chiến, Nguyễn Quốc Nguyện, Bao Phương Vinh, Lường Văn Nam and Phạm Quốc Tuấn have become familiar. They reach deep rounds at Asian events, earn international entries, and have long been the backbone of the national team. Ho Chi Minh City has hosted rounds of the three-cushion World Cup system run by the Union Mondiale de Billard (UMB), bringing leading cueists to play on home tables.

In pool, Dương Quốc Hoàng and a following generation have delivered medals at the SEA Games and Asian championships. SEA Games 31, hosted by Vietnam in 2026, included billiards and snooker in the official programme, generating a fresh wave of interest. But the gap between "able to compete" and "able to make a living" remains wide.

That separation produces a concrete consequence: resources are split in two, and fans see only the tip of the iceberg — the competition itself.

The income structure of a professional cueist

To understand the billiards market, you start where the money enters. A professional cueist in Vietnam draws income from three main sources: tournament prize money, personal sponsorship deals, and income from a team or managing club.

The first — prize money — swings sharply by event. International tournaments offer high prize structures but limited fields, and only a small group of cueists accumulates enough ranking points to enter. The second — personal sponsorship — depends almost entirely on media profile. The third — team or club — is the most stable part, and also the least disclosed.

This is where I will speak plainly: in Vietnamese billiards, team contracts are not published. There is no posted salary scale. There is no transparent transfer mechanism as in football. A cueist can move from one team to another in a single evening, over one phone call, and fans learn of it only when they see him wearing a different shirt at the next event.

Three numbers of mine broke a deal that had barely begun. I once sat across from exactly such a folder. Three numbers mattered: the contract term, the fixed remuneration, and the image-rights exclusivity clause. The third killed the deal. A young cueist was offered attractive terms, but the image-rights clause was drawn so broadly that he could no longer sign any personal advertising deal with any brand. Seen casually, it looked like a step up. Counted number by number, it was a leash.

The wording inside a contract is the only infidelity evidence professional sport keeps. It does not say who is good or bad. It only records who promised what to whom, on which date, and by what number.

One detail is rarely noticed: most sponsorship contracts in Vietnamese billiards are signed by season, not by year. That means a cueist can spend the first three months of a year with a workable budget and the final three with a negative one — while the international calendar clusters precisely in that final stretch. This is structural risk no individual can solve alone.

The hidden heroes of the table

Ask ten Vietnamese billiards fans who matters most in a tournament and nine will name a cueist.

But the person who decides whether a cueist trains six hours a day is usually the hall owner. The person who decides whether a cueist makes the flight is the logistics handler. The person who decides whether a young player eats properly during a tournament month is the coach — who often pays out of his own pocket.

An almost invisible occupational layer exists in this industry: the people who run billiards halls in the provinces, who organise weekend amateur events, who drive young cueists to distant tournaments. They never appear on television. Yet without them, the development pipeline would dry up within three years.

Based on my own experience watching matches, a cueist who reaches the knockout stage of an international event is usually the product of three to five people working quietly for months. A practice partner, someone who maintains cues and tables, someone who arranges travel. None of them appears on the scoreboard.

The youth pipeline and the trap at twenty

Vietnamese billiards' biggest problem is not at the top. It is at the bottom of the pipeline.

A young cueist usually starts at a provincial hall, is spotted by an owner or a coach, then enters amateur tournaments. If he improves, he is invited into a city team or a sponsor-funded squad. From there, the path narrows fast.

The cost of maintaining a professional training rhythm — table time, cues, travel, entry fees — far exceeds earnings from amateur events. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, most young cueists must choose between pursuing billiards and finding stable work. Many choose the second, not because passion faded, but because nobody is paying the bills.

This is where every comparison with football collapses. Football has academies, training contracts and compensation mechanisms when a player leaves. Vietnamese billiards has no equivalent for any of those three. A young cueist who leaves one team for another leaves nothing behind, and that is precisely why managing units hesitate to invest long term.

The contrarian angle: where professionalisation actually lives

A common belief holds that Vietnamese billiards is "professionalising". More tournaments, bigger purses, glossier images. But look at the structure, and most of the change sits on the surface.

Professionalisation does not live in the number of tournaments. It lives in whether a cueist can plan a long career: knowing where he will compete over the next six months, knowing what he will be paid, knowing his rights and obligations when a dispute arises. In Vietnam, many cueists — including established names — still lack all three at once.

Here I want to say something few want to hear: the arena is empty, the money still flows, and the unpublished contracts turn out to be an umbrella for the stubborn. That umbrella shelters parties who want the status quo preserved, because when nobody knows a cueist's true price, whoever holds the information holds the advantage.

The media boom in domestic billiards in recent years creates a paradox: the more viewers, the higher a cueist's image value — but most of that value does not flow to the cueist. It flows to intermediaries: organisers, brands, media companies. The cueist creates the value and is usually the last to be paid.

The major-tournament season and the pressure of the calendar

The major-tournament season places particular pressure on Vietnamese cueists: a dense calendar, constant travel, and fan expectations rising with every medal.

I have sat through enough evenings beside the table to understand that a failed shot at a decisive moment is often tied to off-table matters: a delayed flight, a short night's sleep, a contract not yet signed. Nobody records those in the match report. But they exist on every stroke.

In carom disciplines, the gap between the leading group and the chasing pack is thin. A cueist can beat a world-class opponent in the morning and lose to a mid-ranked one in the afternoon if he has to arrange everything from air tickets to accommodation himself. Physical and mental consistency comes from logistics more than from talent.

Rivals in Europe and elsewhere in Asia standardised their logistics long ago. They travel as teams, with conditioning specialists, nutrition support and clear contracts. The contest between cueists therefore takes place off the table as well.

Where the risk sits

Vietnamese billiards' biggest risk is not a shortage of talent. It is a shortage of structure to keep talent in place.

Three risks are concrete. First, income risk: an injured or out-of-form cueist loses sponsorship almost immediately, with no safety net beneath. Second, legal risk: when contract disputes arise, most cueists have no lawyer and no clear document to check against. Third, systemic risk: if the current generation retires without successors, international results will fall behind within one cycle.

These three risks are not independent. They form a chain: weak income leads to weak savings, weak savings prevent investment in the next cohort, and without a next cohort the commercial value of the whole scene declines with it.

Toward a transparent market

What I want to see in the coming years is not another tournament. What I want to see is a regularly updated national ranking, a transfer mechanism that keeps records, and a fund supporting young cueists travelling to international events.

A transparent market does not make anyone poorer. It simply distributes value more accurately. When a cueist's true price is known, low bidders are forced to bid higher. When contract terms are disclosed at a basic level, intermediaries lose some freedom to interpret them in their own favour.

I do not hunt news. I hunt the silence between two interviews. And in the current silence of Vietnamese billiards, one question remains unanswered: if today's generation is at its peak, what will the next generation live on when they turn thirty?

Closing

The trophies will still be handed out, and the champion will still stand under the lights. But the future of Vietnamese billiards is not decided at the moment the trophy is raised. It is decided in the corridor behind, where three men talk while the arena lights go out — and where that thin folder will, eventually, be opened.