Government Launches the Biggest Anti-Piracy Crackdown in History — Are Vietnamese OTT Platforms Ready to Seize the Opportunity?

For years, pirated movie websites have existed almost parallel to Vietnam’s entire online entertainment market. A generation of users has grown accustomed to accessing nearly any content for free, with fast updates and easy availability just a few clicks away. Meanwhile, most legitimate OTT platforms have yet to deliver an experience strong enough to completely change that behavior.

May 2026 marks a major turning point as a nationwide campaign targeting digital copyright violations is being rolled out at unprecedented scale. This is the strongest anti-piracy crackdown Vietnam has ever seen, directly targeting illegal movie websites, intellectual property violations, and entire ecosystems distributing unlicensed content.

In theory, this should be a golden opportunity for Vietnamese OTT platforms to expand their paid subscriber base. However, Kompa’s social listening data reveals a far more complex reality.

Users Are Not Against Paying — They Just Don’t Think OTT Is “Worth Paying For” Yet

Through the analysis of 8,994 discussions across Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, online communities, and news platforms, Kompa’s report “Online Entertainment Platforms in Vietnam – Streaming & OTT” shows that most Vietnamese users do not oppose paying for licensed content.

What they are dissatisfied with is the experience provided by official OTT platforms themselves.

In discussions related to pirated movie sites and streaming services, users consistently mention issues such as limited content libraries, slow subtitle updates, difficult-to-use applications, and unstable viewing experiences.

Particularly among anime fans, K-drama audiences, and international movie viewers, update speed and content discovery directly influence willingness to pay. This suggests that the battle between OTT platforms and pirated websites is no longer about “free versus paid” — it has become a battle over user experience.

TikTok and YouTube Are Rewriting the Entire OTT Game

One of the report’s most notable findings is that 85% of OTT-related discussions now take place on YouTube and TikTok.

This reflects a massive shift in how Vietnamese users consume entertainment. Audiences no longer decide what to watch after opening an OTT app. They decide beforehand — through social media.

YouTube has become the place where viewers watch reviews, reactions, and analysis before choosing a series or movie. Meanwhile, TikTok acts as the entertainment industry’s “emotion amplification machine,” where memes, fancams, reaction clips, and highlights can spread across the internet within hours.

As a result, traditional OTT marketing models are increasingly struggling to keep up with the speed of social video virality.

Netflix Is Winning Because of Internet Culture — Not Just Its Content Library

Kompa’s data shows that Netflix is currently mentioned 18 times more than FPT Play and 24 times more than VieON in Vietnam.

This gap is not simply about marketing budgets or movie quantity. Netflix is winning because it has become embedded in users’ daily internet culture.

The platform exists within memes, reaction clips, creator content, fandoms, and everyday entertainment habits. In contrast, most Vietnamese OTT platforms are still competing primarily through short-term “assets” such as football rights, reality shows, or temporary viral moments.

This also represents the biggest gap between international OTT services and Vietnamese OTT platforms today: one side owns “daily habits,” while the other mainly captures “seasonal attention.”

Anime Could Become the Next “Gold Mine” for Vietnamese OTT

The report also indicates that Vietnam’s OTT market still contains significant untapped growth opportunities, with anime being the clearest example.

Anime audiences demonstrate exceptionally high willingness to pay, strong fandom behavior, and daily viewing demand. Yet no platform has fully satisfied this audience in terms of content library depth and subtitle update speed.

As the anti-piracy campaign reshapes viewing behavior, anime could become one of the few remaining “blue oceans” in Vietnam’s OTT market over the next 12 months.

The New OTT Battle Is a Battle for User Time

The most important insight from Kompa’s report is this: the OTT war is no longer about who owns more movies.

Platforms are now competing to capture:

• Time

• Emotions

• Fandoms

• Daily internet habits of Vietnamese users

As pirated movie websites face the strongest crackdown in history, the greatest opportunity will belong to platforms capable of making legitimate streaming experiences convenient enough, engaging enough, and valuable enough for users to genuinely want to stay.

Download the Full Report to Discover

• Why the anti-piracy campaign could reshape Vietnam’s entire OTT industry

• What users truly think about pirated movie websites and official OTT platforms

• The real gap between Netflix and Vietnamese OTT services

• The new role of TikTok and YouTube in the streaming industry

• Untapped growth opportunities over the next 12 months

• Which platforms have the strongest breakout potential after the 2026 “copyright cleansing” wave