Vietjet, Starlink, and the rights-bubble lesson sport refuses to learn

2 AM, the phone buzzed, and a truth cracked open. On the screen was a link from an old colleague in Chengdu, with one short line: "Read this, then tell me if we're in the wrong trade."

I opened it. A corporate release. Vietjet signed an agreement with SpaceX to equip its fleet with Starlink, aiming for free in-flight Wi-Fi. The ceremony included General Secretary and President To Lam; Vietjet Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao; and Tim Hughes, SpaceX Senior Vice President of Global Sales.

Not a single player. Not a single match. Not a single transfer. Yet I sat there, uncomfortably lucid, because in that aviation release I saw the exact mistake the sports industry repeats every day, wearing a different name.

They call me a heretic, but I only see what they refuse to look at.

The disclosed scope is clear: 120 aircraft, comprising 100 narrowbody A321 and 737 jets plus 20 widebody A330s, along with future deliveries. That is the only hard fact the release offers.

Everything else is fog. No contract value. No duration. No exclusivity terms. No certification pathway. No installation timeline. No cost per aircraft, and no cost per gigabyte a passenger consumes. The emotional anchor of the entire release is one word: free.

A low-cost carrier has decided to give away high-speed Wi-Fi across its domestic and international network. In other words, it is converting a potential revenue line into a cost line. That is a cost-absorption decision, and like every cost-absorption decision in the content economy, it rests on an unproven assumption: that connectivity infrastructure generates value by itself.

I have a habit whenever I face such an assumption: close the door, switch off the phone, review the tape. This time there was no tape. Only a release, two signatories, and a data gap so large it speaks for itself. That gap, for the sports industry, is a mirror.

Sport has hit this mirror many times. It is an industry that lives on broadcast rights, and over the past decade it has watched rights prices climb to absurd levels, tech platforms pour money in without a calculable payback date, and deals once called "historic contracts" become balance-sheet burdens within a few years. When I look at the Vietjet deal, I do not see an airline doing technology. I see an industry repeating a pattern I have watched sport walk through and pay for.

The sports rights bubble and Vietjet's free Wi-Fi deal run on the same mechanism: one side pays to buy content in the hope of buying users, the other pays to buy infrastructure in the hope of buying loyalty. Both spend before proving the spend pays off.

Sport walked this road longer and paid harder. For over a decade, streaming platforms raced to pay astronomical sums for league rights, not because they calculated profit, but because they needed a reason for people to download an app. A football rights package was bought with money the buyer itself knew would lose for years. But the fear of losing subscribers outweighed the fear of losses. Rights prices kept climbing; margins kept eroding.

What was hidden in that race is a structural truth. Sports rights are not a profit-generating asset. They are a customer-acquisition cost. When every platform has rights, rights stop being a competitive advantage and become a minimum entry fee. That is when the bubble deflates. People stop buying rights to win, and start buying them not to lose. And in a game where everyone pays dearly not to lose, the only real winner is the seller.

In-flight Wi-Fi was once a premium perk, tied to business class and deep-pocketed carriers. Now it is being demoted to a mass amenity. The release calls this a shift from "premium amenity" to "essential digital infrastructure." But that claim is positioning language, not evidence. There is no data on cost, on usage rates, or on the loyalty that free Wi-Fi actually generates.

What aviation is doing, and what sport already did, share one fatal trait: both gamble on owning the pipe instead of understanding what flows through it.

Let me tell a trade story. In 2026, I went to Russia for the World Cup. In a semifinal at Luzhniki, I commentated live and mispronounced a player's name three times in the first half. Social media mocked me. I went home, spent thirty days reviewing the tape of an entire national team, then published a prediction about a teenage player that was called insane. History proved me right. But the real lesson was not that I was right. It was that to be right, I had to accept that what I thought was an asset, a commentator's credibility, was really a continuous investment, and that investment only pays if I never stop paying with review hours.

Apply that lesson here. An airline installing free Wi-Fi is investing in credibility and loyalty. A platform buying rights is investing in subscriber numbers. Both are logically sound, as long as they keep paying. But the moment they stop paying, credibility and subscribers vanish as fast as they appeared. That is the definition of a cost, not an asset.

In football, I have seen this pattern at the sponsorship layer. Airlines were once among the most generous sponsors. Airline names sat on shirt fronts, on pitch-side boards, on competition titles. But airline sponsorship in football is not a technology revenue line; it is marketing spend packaged as a partnership. When marketing budgets shrink, those contracts vanish faster than a coach losing the dressing room. I raise this as a clearly labelled hypothesis, not a conclusion. Nowhere in the release is football, a stadium, or any sports property mentioned. Anyone wanting to tie this deal to a club must invent the link. I do not invent.

In Vietnam, the sports rights story has its own layer. Fans once expected big matches on free-to-air television. Then rights became an expensive commodity, traditional broadcasters could not afford them, and viewers shifted to paywalls or piracy. A generation of viewers was fractured, not because they did not want to watch, but because of a cost structure the sports industry built for itself. When rights become an entry fee, fans become the ones paying the bill for someone else's race.

With aviation, I fear a similar script. Free Wi-Fi today is a perk. In three years it is a mandatory standard. In five years it is a hidden fee inside the ticket price, and no one remembers it was ever called free. I do not say this as a prophet; I say it as someone who has reviewed his own industry's tape many times and seen the same mistake repackaged under a new name.

When a company announces a major deal with full political ceremony and not one financial figure, the likeliest reading is that it is a framework agreement, a memorandum of understanding upgraded for communications. I say this with full professional caution: it is inference from pattern, not verified fact. But the pattern matters, because sport is also full of framework deals inflated into historic contracts.

And here is the most dangerous part. When connectivity infrastructure becomes a minimum standard, people stop asking what it costs and start asking why a rival has it and they do not. The race shifts from calculation to defence. Sport has lived in that state for a decade. Broadcasters paid not because rights were worth it, but because not paying meant losing viewers. When defensive logic takes over, margins vanish, and the final payer is always the viewer, or everyone, in the form of costs pushed somewhere else.

Free Wi-Fi may follow the same road. Ticket prices will not rise immediately. But connectivity costs do not disappear. They crawl into ticket prices, baggage fees, and surcharges no one names. I have seen this in sport: a free service always has a bill somewhere, and the payer never gets to see it.

I could be wrong, and I want to be clear about where.

First, the comparison between in-flight Wi-Fi and sports rights is imperfect. A passenger on a plane is an audience locked inside a metal tube at ten thousand metres, with no substitute. That temporary monopoly power makes free Wi-Fi far more valuable for retention than a rights package amid endless entertainment options. If so, Vietjet's cost-absorption decision could be economically sound, not delusional.

Second, infrastructure can pay off in ways data does not capture immediately. Behavioural data from passengers who connect to Wi-Fi is a valuable asset. Targeted advertising, cross-selling, and accumulated brand value are returns that never appear on the cost sheet. I have no data to refute that possibility, and I will not invent data to refute it.

Third, perhaps I am reading an aviation release through the eyes of a man made paranoid by the sports industry. That is a real bias, and I admit it. I have often had to review my own tape to see that I spot bubbles everywhere only because I once stood inside one.

But even granting all of the above, one question still hangs: if the spend truly pays off, why does no one publish a single figure to prove it?

That night I stammered, but history did not. I once mispronounced a player's name three times in one half, was mocked online, then spent thirty days reviewing tape to extract a prediction history proved right. The lesson was not that I was right. It was that shame is a better driver than confidence.

I will track this deal with exactly that discipline. Three milestones to watch: confirmation of licensing and technical certification for in-flight connectivity; the first aircraft actually installed and entering service; and any financial figure eventually disclosed. As long as all three remain blank, every claim of essential infrastructure remains a claim.

And if you work in sport, note this deal in your book. Not because it involves football, but because it repeats football's error. One day, when a league signs another giant rights contract no one can explain the profitability of, remember the 120 aircraft given free Wi-Fi. Both sides will talk about the future. Neither will give a figure for the present. And the payer, as always, will be the one who was never asked.