From Better Choice Awards 2026 to Vietnam's Sports Economy: When Green Mobility Brands Turn to the Pitch

The Better Choice Awards 2026 ceremony has closed, and a few scribbled notes still sit on my desk. I have never been a reporter on cars. My whole career has been tied to the pitch, to the dressing room, to matches where the audience remembers the scoreline but rarely remembers who drove them to the stadium. Yet that night, what kept me sitting longest was a question that seemed to have nothing to do with football: if these green mobility brands keep growing, how will Vietnam's sporting arena change?

At 56, I still ask one question: where are women scoring in this game?

They gave awards to VinFast and Green SM — two names tied to electric vehicles and electric taxi services. Eight categories were listed, along with two individuals, Mr. Nguyen Hong Nhat and Ms. Tran Thanh Thuy. No players. No coaches. No team.

So why does a sports reporter sit down to analyze an awards night about electric cars?

The answer lies in one very concrete place: money. And in an even more concrete place: where money flows inside a sports economy.

The context of this story is not on the pitch. It sits in a program organized by VCCorp, in coordination with the National Innovation Center (NIC) and the Innovation Agency (SATI) under the Ministry of Science and Technology. In 2026, the program honored VinFast and Green SM across a range of categories.

VinFast is a Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer. Green SM is an electric taxi platform running VinFast vehicles. The two brands share a corporate root and a single narrative: putting electric transport on the streets.

The figures the program cited are worth recording. Green SM has reached eight countries. As of August 2026, the platform reported roughly 850 million green trips. Total distance travelled on VinFast electric vehicles passed about six billion kilometers. CO2 emissions reduced exceeded 800,000 tons, equivalent to the absorption capacity of 36 million trees per year, or roughly 12,000 hectares of new forest.

These are self-reported corporate figures. I record them with that caveat, because a serious reporter must distinguish between numbers that have been independently audited and numbers a company calculates for itself.

As for the categories: VinFast took new pure electric car of the year for the new-generation VF 8, GenZ car of the year for the VF 3, and passenger service car of the year for the Limo Green. Green SM was cited for leading market share in Vietnam. Mr. Nguyen Hong Nhat, General Director of VinFast Auto for the Vietnam market, and Ms. Tran Thanh Thuy, Deputy General Director of operations for two-wheelers and GSM delivery, received the Proud Vietnamese Brand of the Year title. The event series ran across 34 provinces and cities.

Now place all of that next to a pitch.

I have watched Vietnamese football for many years, long enough to notice an uncomfortable pattern. Whenever a new industry grows in Vietnam, sports sponsorship money arrives one beat late — and it usually goes to the most visible place, not the place that needs it most. Telecom was like this. Beer was like this. Banking was like this. Now it is the turn of green mobility.

What is striking is that the world has already moved ahead of us on exactly this point. Global electric vehicle brands have turned sport into a primary marketing front. A Chinese EV brand once became an official sponsor of a European Championship. Formula One has seen electric automakers arrive. Triathlon, marathons, mass running events — all have become stages for electric vehicles. The reason is simple and cold: sport sells emotion, and electric vehicles need to sell trust.

An electric car cannot be sold on specifications. It is sold on a story. And there is no place that tells a story as effectively as a packed stand.

In Vietnam, VinFast and Green SM are not strangers to public space. Their vehicles run on every street. But the distance from the street to a sporting stand is a different distance — it is the distance between commercial presence and cultural narrative.

Let us split this story into two layers.

The first layer is direct sponsorship. A brand that wants to attach its name to sport has a few basic routes: naming a competition, printing a logo on a shirt, supplying vehicles to a team, signing an athlete, or funding school sports programs. For an electric vehicle company, the third route — supplying vehicles — is the most natural entry. Teams need to travel. Clubs need transport. A tournament needs logistics vehicles. This kind of sponsorship is both operationally sensible and easy to turn into a story.

The second layer is emotional sponsorship. This is the harder layer. For an electric vehicle brand to become part of a sports fan's memory, it must appear at the right moment, in the right place, with the right story. A car that drives a team to the stadium creates no memory. A car that carries a young player from a poor region to his first training session does.

This is where I believe Vietnamese brands have not yet gone far enough. The value of sports sponsorship is not in the money spent, but in whether the brand is present in the moment people remember most.

And when we speak of moments, I am compelled to speak of women's sport.

On a men's football day, I quietly fold women's records into every bulletin.

Throughout my career, I have learned one thing from the conversations inside dressing rooms. Women's sport does not lack stories. Women's sport lacks tellers, lacks sponsors, and lacks a system that turns stories into value. When a major brand decides to spend, the first reflex is almost always to spend on men's football. That is a rational reflex in terms of reach, but an expensive reflex in the long run.

A men's football stand is already full. A women's football stand still has empty seats. In media economics, empty seats are usually where the best value sits.

I do not say this to paint a rosy picture. I say it because I have stood on both sides. In 2026, when I left traditional television to build an online program series about women's sport, my first episode featured a 22-year-old female striker. The program reached 500,000 views in 24 hours — a record for women's sports content at the time. The demand was real. The problem was never the audience. The problem was who pays.

So if VinFast and Green SM — two brands just honored, with financial capacity and an innovation story — decided to put money into sport, where would they put it?

This is where I want to draw a comparison. Globally, automotive brands have long been pillars of sports sponsorship. They sponsor teams, competitions, and even minor sports. But they are also facing a new question: does sports sponsorship actually create value, or does it only create image?

For a green mobility brand, this question is harder still. They sell a product tied to an environmental commitment, and an environmental commitment needs to be proven, not merely declared.

In sport, there is a very concrete way to prove it. An electric vehicle company sponsoring a mass running event can measure the emissions cut by replacing petrol vehicles with electric ones in logistics. An electric taxi company sponsoring a club can measure the number of rides carrying fans. These are numbers that can be verified, published, and turned into a real story.

But this is also where the trap appears.

I want to use this section to speak plainly.

First, a corporate award is not a sporting achievement. A brand being honored at a program co-organized by its own media ecosystem is a commercial signal, not independent certification. That is not wrong. But a sports reporter must clearly distinguish the two, because if we confuse them, we turn the sports page into an advertising page.

Second, commercial success does not automatically convert into sports investment. A brand can sell hundreds of thousands of vehicles, expand to eight countries, log hundreds of millions of trips — and still not put a single dollar into a stadium. These two things are not as tightly linked as people assume. Sports investment is a separate strategic decision, with its own logic, and it is often delayed because it does not bring quick returns.

Third, and this is what concerns me most: the risk of greenwashing in sport. A brand calling itself green does not mean all its operations are green. When environmental figures are calculated and published by the company itself, readers need an independent source to cross-check. The method behind 36 million trees or 12,000 hectares of new forest is an accessible way of expressing things, but it is also a method-sensitive way of expressing things. Change the method, and the number can change a great deal.

For sport, the consequence is clear. If a competition wraps itself in a green coat thanks to a green sponsor, but the competition itself does not change how it operates, that is communication, not transformation.

I do not write these things to deny effort. I write because I want Vietnamese sport to learn from sports that went before — where large brands entered, enthusiastically, then withdrew when they realized sport was not a cheap advertising channel.

So what will decide it?

When the old wave recedes, I step onto a new platform — and the voice is still mine.

I believe the answer lies in how we build the relationship between brand and sport, not in the amount of money. A sustainable relationship needs three things.

One is transparency. Brands disclose what they sponsor, for whom, how much, and for how long. Competitions disclose who pays whom. Fans have a right to know.

Two is measurement. Every sponsorship should come with a metric, and that metric should measure both commercial value and social value.

Three is inclusion. If green money flows only into men's football, we will miss most of the potential. Women's sport, school sport, community sport — these are where a green brand can create real impact, and tell a real story.

The dressing-room voice taught me this: people do not remember which brand paid the most. People remember which brand showed up when they needed it most.

In 2026, when every competition stopped, I built a livestream series so female players could tell their own stories. One goalkeeper said her salary had been cut 60 percent, and that she had to sell her medals to pay her mother's hospital bills. After the broadcast, 1,200 viewers contributed to a support fund. No major brand stood behind that broadcast. Yet it still created change, because it touched a real gap.

I tell this story to make one point: Vietnamese sport should not sit and wait for large brands to come and rescue it. It should prepare a place for them to arrive. A place with data, with stories, with a system. When that place is ready, money will find it. When that place is empty, money will go elsewhere.

So how should the whole picture be read?

Read optimistically, Better Choice Awards 2026 shows a new generation of Vietnamese enterprises growing with real capacity. They have capital, technology, and cross-border ambition. And on that journey, sport is a door they will almost certainly have to open.

Read cautiously, this is still just an awards night. An awards night does not change a sports economy. What changes a sports economy is contracts signed, stadiums built, competitions organized, and athletes paid enough to live.

The gap between these two readings is the gap between potential and reality. And it is a gap we can measure.

I want to close on a very concrete point, the one I believe matters most to someone working in sport.

In Vietnam, most female athletes still work under conditions where income is not enough for them to give themselves fully. Most women's competitions are still looking for sponsors. Most women's clubs still operate on small sums and large hearts. Meanwhile, the money of new brands is looking for places to flow.

If these two streams meet, we could have a decade of change.

If they do not meet, we will have another decade in which people give awards to electric cars, and female players still pay for their own boots.

That is why I sat down to write this piece late at night, after reading the full list of eight categories and asking myself why not one category was dedicated to sport.

My question is not whether VinFast and Green SM will sponsor sport. My question is: when they decide, is Vietnamese sport ready to receive them? Has anyone prepared a proposal serious enough, data-rich enough, and visionary enough to turn an awards night about electric cars into a sponsored season?

I believe the answer lies on our side, not on theirs. And I believe the time to answer that question is now, while green money is still finding its way, not ten years from now, when it has already flowed into the most visible places.

In more than thirty years holding a microphone, I have learned one thing: opportunity in sport does not arrive as a contract. It arrives as a moment, and people must recognize it before it passes.

That awards night has passed. But the question remains.