PUBG Esports under KRAFTON: Centralized Power, Where the Money Flows, and the Standing of Vietnamese Players

I sat down in Incheon on a March morning, reopened the scoreboard of a regional PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS match, and stopped for a long time at one number. A Vietnamese team had reached the finals, but most of the revenue that ecosystem generates never passed through the hands of anyone on that roster. That is where everything I write below begins. I work as a club financial analyst, not a commentator. My job is reading balance sheets, not shouting when someone scores. And when I look at PUBG Esports — a discipline where KRAFTON holds total operational control — I see a power structure very few Vietnamese fans ever get to see in full. This article is an attempt to shine a light into that hidden part. One thing must be said immediately to avoid misunderstanding. I am not writing to accuse anyone. I write because in more than twenty years observing the sports industry, I have learned one thing: a crisis does not destroy a discipline — it only identifies the business models that were already dead long ago. The right question is not "is PUBG Esports in trouble", but "who is paying for the current structure, and do they know they are paying". Context must be placed correctly before I go into the numbers. PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS is a battle royale title developed and published by KRAFTON. But it does not stop at being a game product. From 2026 onward, KRAFTON built an esports ecosystem of its own, with a tiered tournament system running from the regional level up to a world final, controlled entirely by the company from organization, rules, and scheduling to prize distribution. This model differs fundamentally from how disciplines like football operate, where power is fragmented among regional federations, continental confederations and a global governing body. In PUBG Esports, there is only one center of power, and that center is KRAFTON. This centralization has clear benefits. One decision-maker means one party accountable. There is no three-way dispute over rules, no calendar torn apart by conflicting regional interests. But it also has a downside that analysts like me see more clearly than fans: when power is centralized, money centralizes with it, and the regions with the least voice — Southeast Asia among them, Vietnam among them — tend to absorb the risk rather than the upside. This is where my valuation model goes to work. Players do not have a price — they have a story, and the market does not know how to read it. A Vietnamese player like Lã Phương Tiến Đạt, known by the nickname Himass, or a name like Trần Vũ, known as TanVuu, carries stories that a tournament scoreboard never fully records. But the PUBG Esports market prices them by one thing only: placement at tournaments. It does not price their ability to pull viewers, does not price the fact that they represent an enormous player market in Vietnam, and certainly cannot price what it means for a Vietnamese team to go deep in an international tournament for a community of millions. I know this not because I read KRAFTON reports. I know this because I once sat in a meeting room by the Incheon coast, holding a valuation model that the club leadership I worked for called a "fan's game". In 2026, when I built a model combining follower growth with competitive performance indicators, I was pushed aside. I kept writing the report quietly. I kept developing three different versions of the model. And by 2026, when stadiums were empty and ticket revenue evaporated, the very numbers I had been told were fanciful became the only thing still standing. Esports is not football's rival. It is a mirror exposing the entire spending habits of this industry. That is why I want to talk about PUBG Esports in financial language, not cheerleading language. Let us start with revenue structure. KRAFTON earns from PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS through several channels, but the main one remains in-game item sales, battle passes and limited collaborations. This revenue comes from tens of millions of players worldwide, including a very large and very loyal Vietnamese player community. This is the point readers must remember: licensing and in-game item revenue is the prettiest number when you do not ask where it comes from. That number comes from players. A large share comes from players in developing markets, where per-capita in-game spending is high relative to average income. Now compare the money flowing out. The prize pool of a PUBG Esports world final is not small — it runs into millions of dollars when accumulated across a season and major events. But when you divide that number by participating teams, then by players per team, then by the months they invested to be there, you arrive at an average income that I can state plainly: it is not enough to sustain a professional in many regions, let alone to reinvest in a team. This is not a criticism of KRAFTON. It is a structural observation. Every valuation model is wrong. The question is: wrong in whose favor. When a discipline is organized under a publisher-controlled model, value is created in one place but distributed in another. The party creating the most value in the community's eyes — the player — is not the party receiving the largest share of the pie. The tournament organizer, the IP owner, the distributor, are. I want to go deeper into the financial mechanics of a Vietnamese PUBG Esports team, because this is the least-discussed part. How does a professional Vietnamese PUBG team operate? It has no ticket revenue, since tournaments happen online or at venues the organizer controls. It has no media rights revenue, since rights belong to KRAFTON. It has no team-linked item revenue, since that mechanism is set by the publisher. So where does money come from? Brand sponsorship, player salaries paid by the team, prize money, and a small share of community income such as jersey sales or fundraising. In that structure, sponsorship is the backbone. And sponsorship depends on what? It depends on visibility. The more a team is seen — on the official broadcast, on streaming platforms, in viral clips — the easier it is to attract sponsors. Here, the player with a strong story becomes the most important asset. But here too, the market prices that asset terribly. Take Himass. A player with a memorable nickname, tied to a young fan community, holding significant social media engagement. In my valuation model, this is an underexploited media asset. On the team's payroll, he may be paid on par with a player of equal competitive metrics but far less appeal. That gap is the hidden value the market overlooks. And when the team fails to capture it, the ultimate loser is the player himself. I once witnessed this in another context. In 2026, working for a K-League football club, I found a 23-year-old midfielder with follower growth three times that of peers with the same professional metrics. His commercial value was untapped. Leadership dismissed it. I still wrote the report. And when the transfer market opened, another club saw the value mine had missed. That was a system failure, not a player failure. The same principle applies exactly to PUBG Esports. TanVuu is the second example. A name tied to the early era of Vietnamese PUBG, representing an entire generation of players who carried this discipline from internet cafes to international arenas. TanVuu's story, like those of many Southeast Asian esports players, carries value a scoreboard cannot measure: it proves this region is not merely a market that consumes games, but a source of talent. But is that story paid for? Rarely. And this is the crux of this entire article: the PUBG Esports structure creates value in Southeast Asia but converts that value into money elsewhere. Look at viewership. Southeast Asian regional PUBG Esports matches often draw very high online viewership, especially when a Vietnamese team competes. But that number, on its own, does not convert into cash flowing into Vietnamese teams' pockets. Viewers create value for streaming platforms, for the publisher by sustaining the game's popularity, for global sponsors. But in that flow, where do Vietnamese teams stand? They are content, a product being sold, yet they are not the party receiving most of the profit from their own product. I call this the content creator's value paradox. In football, a good player can negotiate an individual sponsorship deal directly with a brand. In PUBG Esports, that mechanism is limited by rules and by the publisher's control. Players lack the same autonomy over their own image that their peers in disciplines run by independent federations enjoy. This is where I must address an aspect many fans do not want to hear. If you are a Vietnamese PUBG Esports fan, you will respond to what I just wrote with a fair question: if the structure is so bad, why do Vietnamese teams still exist and still compete at the top? The answer is simple, and it is painful: they exist because there are people currently paying out of their own pockets to sustain them, and those people receive almost nothing financially in return. Esports sponsorship in Vietnam usually comes from businesses with affection for the discipline, or from owners with personal passion. This is not a sustainable business model. It is a model fed by love. And when passion runs dry, the team dissolves. That is why we see so many esports teams break up after only a few short seasons. There is an argument I have heard many times that I want to confront directly. People say the fan community must "support" the team by buying jerseys, by watching, by engaging. This argument is partly right, but it places the burden in the wrong place. If a team can only survive on ordinary fans, with ordinary incomes, buying jerseys, that is not a business. It is a charity with a logo attached. The stands generate revenue? I have a bridge to sell. Stands generate emotional value, and emotional value can convert into money — but only when there is a sufficiently smart business model to do so. In PUBG Esports, that model is missing, and it is missing systematically, not at random. So what is the solution? This is the part where I must be careful, because I do not want to fall into the trap of believing I am the only one who sees the problem. Let me translate KRAFTON's position into their own language. KRAFTON is a publicly listed company. It has obligations to shareholders, not to players. Its goal is to maximize share value, sustain revenue growth, and expand markets. Every esports decision it makes is rational from a corporate governance standpoint. Esports is a marketing tool, a channel to extend product lifecycle, a way to retain players. It is not an independent objective. Once you understand that, you will no longer be surprised by how money is allocated. And I must also concede this: if KRAFTON had not invested in the international tournament system, many Vietnamese players would have had no stage to prove their ability. The centralization of power that I criticize is the same mechanism that created opportunity. This is a paradox I cannot resolve in one article, and perhaps no one can fully. But paradox does not mean we stop asking questions. It only means the questions must be sharper. This is the counter-intuitive angle I consider the most important of this entire article. The common mistake Vietnamese fans make when talking about esports is asking "how can Vietnamese teams get stronger". That is a question about results on the field, and it is easy to answer: more practice, better opponent analysis, stronger recruitment. But the right question must be: "how can Vietnamese teams get more power within the system". That is a question about structure, and it is far harder, because it touches those who control value distribution. A Vietnamese team can win a regional title. But if the structure does not change, that victory does not convert into financial sustainability. On the contrary, it may merely convert into pressure on other teams in the same region, making the whole ecosystem more brutally competitive without being wealthier. I have seen this model in Southeast Asian football. Clubs compete brutally for continental cup spots, but most of them run chronic losses, because they compete on cost rather than on revenue. Southeast Asian esports is walking exactly that road. There is one more thing I want to say, and it relates to my core view on injuries and comebacks, though here it applies to esports. In sports, medical confidentiality keeps fans and media blind. Clubs only disclose injuries that benefit their share price or image. In esports, the problem is worse, because player mental health is not yet treated as part of the official report. When a player abruptly leaves a team, when a team dissolves, fans are given a polished explanation. The truth about burnout, pressure, and the real economic reasons rarely makes the news. This is the dark zone that a financial writer like me must illuminate. Not for drama, but to give the young people entering this profession a more honest picture of the cost of the dream. So what new thing do I offer readers? I propose a way of looking: stop measuring the health of Vietnamese PUBG Esports by international scoreboard placement. Measure it by the number of teams that run a positive balance sheet three years in a row. Measure it by the number of players who can live entirely on competitive income. Measure it by the number of sponsorship contracts signed directly between players and brands. If those numbers are zero, then every medal stands on sand. I remember the eyes of the marketing staff in that 2026 meeting when I proposed four new revenue models for a football club in crisis from empty stands. Two models failed. But one of them — virtual advertising on broadcast — brought in a significant sum within months. The lesson I drew was not that I was right. The lesson was: in crisis, the laboratory opens, and ideas dismissed as fanciful in peacetime become lifelines in chaos. Vietnamese PUBG Esports needs such a laboratory. It needs to test selling view-from-own-angle tickets for its own matches. It needs to test exclusive behind-the-scenes content packages for paying fans. It needs to test short-term sponsorship contracts per tournament stage rather than rigid season-long deals. It needs to learn to sell the stories of Himass, of TanVuu, of an entire generation of players, as media products with value, not as free photos attached to news articles. The transfer window is not a market. It is a war between spreadsheet and ego. And in esports, the spreadsheet usually loses because no one bothers to open it. I want to close with a progressive thought, not a summary. Over the next five years, I believe the battle royale discipline in general and PUBG Esports in particular will face a life-or-death question: will the publisher share more power with the regions that create value, or will it continue the centralized model until teams in emerging markets exhaust themselves and disappear? If the second scenario happens, Vietnamese players will still play the game. They will still spend on items. They will still watch international tournaments. But Vietnamese names on the leaderboard will thin out, because no one can compete professionally forever on their own love alone. A club does not need a full stadium to make money. It needs to know what an empty stadium is saying. And PUBG Esports Vietnam, at this moment, has a stand that is full of emotion but empty of financial structure. Whoever sits down to listen to the echo in that gap will find the value everyone else is overlooking. The question I leave readers is simple: if you are a loyal fan of a Vietnamese team, are you supporting a club, or are you funding a dream where no one guarantees you a sustainable home in return?