A package called "Korean recipes" pretends on Play to be Vietnam's most famous pirated-streaming football site

On Google Play there's an app called socolive, with package name recipeskoreans ("Korean recipes"). Its developer account belongs to a food export company in Karachi, Pakistan, but the support email points to the domain of ColaTV, another Vietnamese pirate streaming site. It has only 8,882 installs in total, yet it charts in the top 50 of the free sports charts in Thailand and Vietnam, simply because it holds a term Vietnamese users search every day. This piece covers how it got going, where the money comes from, and why this is not something to copy.

Sep 8, one email swapped

2026 Sep 8, the contact email on this app's Play listing changed from a personal Gmail to [email protected] (chrome-stats developer change log). colatv67.live is ColaTV's website, one of Vietnam's pirate football streaming sites. Over the next two or three days, 5 apps under the same developer account were updated to 1.0.0, named socolive, Xoilactv, Colatv, 90phut and thapcamtv, all brand names of Vietnamese pirate sports streaming sites.

Going back further: on Jul 15, the original socolive app on Play (package com.socolive.apps) was taken down (AppBrain). On Aug 10, this "Korean recipes" package was created. August was the Premier League kickoff, and in September it renamed itself and filled the gap.

What Socolive is and why people search it

Socolive is Vietnam's leading free football streaming site, with Vietnamese-language commentary. In January 2024, Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications published a list of 403 illegal websites, with Xôi Lạc and Socolive at the top (CafeF). Whenever one of its domains is blocked, it switches to another, with dozens of mirrors. VnExpress reported that these sites keep 20 domains on standby and can switch within 5 minutes.

It is also big on TikTok. The account socolive.24h posts player highlight clips, and in July 2024, during the European Championship, a training video reached 3M views (TikTok, 11-06 search). Another account, so.co.live.tv, has a video caption that reads: "Watch EURO free on SOCOLIVE, with 2024,90 professional commentators."

Users want three things from that line: free, Vietnamese commentary, and European league matches.

The term gained more value in 2026. From Feb 2, the leading pirate sites Xoilac, Vebo and Thập Cẩm went down together (Tinhte, ZNews). The legitimate K+ also went off air in Jan 1 (24h.com.vn). With the original brands gone, nobody was policing the names. By March, Tuổi Trẻ was asking why so many Xôi Lạc sites were still up, and all of them were impostors. Play's impostor apps came from the same situation.

Where the 8,882 installs came from

Most installs came in between September and early November, right in the first months of the new season. There were two sources:

First, searching "socolive" in Play. Vietnamese users know the brand and search for it directly in Play. The earlier package with the same name had just been taken down, so the search returned this one. A third-party model estimates that 38% of its traffic comes from search and 47% from browsing (AppInsider, model estimate, unverified).

Second, the bar for category charts in small markets is very low. 11-06 It hit #48 on the Thailand Sports Top Free chart, #52 in Vietnam, and #124 in Malaysia; in Oct 23 it also charted #23 in Myanmar's Sports chart (AppWinners). In Vietnam, on the same day, its sister app Xoilactv was #19 on the Sports Top Free chart, with only 4,173 total installs. A few thousand installs is enough to chart, and once charted you get a bit more browse traffic. Thailand is already slipping: 10-29 is now at #25.

We found no evidence of ad buys, creator partnerships or press coverage. The store page has no rating, no reviews and no in-app purchases.

The store page describes scores, but the name sells live streaming

The opening of the store description (Google Play, 11-06) reads "Live streaming and real-time scores." The rest focuses on scores, schedules and standings. Live streaming gets a single line: "Provides links or signal sources for some popular matches." It is followed by a disclaimer: "Live links come from external sources, and their stability and legality are the responsibility of third parties." The data safety section says no data is collected or shared. The only permission requested is internet access, and the package is 21MB.

This is the standard wording these apps use to pass review. We did not install the package, so we cannot confirm whether the app actually contains a scores page or wraps ColaTV's web pages (unverified).

The developer, CPS EXPORTERS, is a real food and commodities export company in Karachi. Its LinkedIn lists 201–500 employees, and its address and phone number are public on Play. The 5 packages under its name are for recipes, hairstyles, cartoon videos and health checks, and Play's "similar apps" for it are all recipes and food delivery. The most likely scenario: an old, legitimate account was borrowed or sold to the piracy network, then used to publish unrelated apps before being rebranded (inference, no pre-rename snapshot obtained).

Where the money comes from

The money is not inside the app. In this sector it comes from outside: the live pages carry betting ads that send people to gambling sites. Vietnamese media reported that the teams behind XoilacTV and CakhiaTV took in 10 billion Vietnamese dong (about $134M) from gambling ads over roughly 5 months, diverted traffic to about 1,700 gambling sites, and caused at least 22 billion dong in losses to rights holders (CafeF, VTV). 30 people in the case are facing criminal charges.

So what one install of this app is worth depends on whether it is plugged into gambling traffic, and you cannot see that from the outside. 8,882 installs alone do not make a business under any calculation.

Who it's competing with

The same term has been passed from one Play listing to the next:

Data from chrome-stats, AppBrain and Google Play. There is also a string of copycats riding the Xôi Lạc brand: Xoilacz 172k, Xoilac - Bóng đá trực tiếp 38k, Xoilactv from another developer 21k, xoilac live 14k.

The legitimate options are FPT Play (23.5M), VTVcab ON (2.76M) and MyTV (2.3M), all paid. In the scores category there are Sofascore (108M) and AiScore (31.4M). TifoLive, listed in September, has already reached 600k and is #1 on Vietnam's sports chart, but it only does scores.

The previous generation of this app reached 30 times its size before being taken down. Under its own package name it does not rank. The product and its competitors follow the same template, and the only difference is that this one currently holds the name.

If it were you

Bottom line: Don't touch it. It sells a pirated brand name, backed by gambling traffic, and Vietnam is already arresting people through criminal cases. Each year or two a new group takes this slot on Play, and every one of them ends with a takedown.

Who it suits: No one. If you are already in this business and have a stack of borrowed accounts, you don't need this article.

Who it doesn't suit: Any indie developer with a single developer account who wants to build something that keeps users long-term and doesn't want copyright or gambling risk. Using someone else's brand name is itself grounds for a Play ban, and a single strike can take down the whole account along with every other app on it.

How to do it (if you must take something from this): What you can take is the method for finding gaps: look for a brand or need that has heavy search volume on the web but no official app. That search term in Play is traffic nobody owns. Then amplify it using the low bar of small-market category charts such as Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar. The prerequisite is that the need is legitimate and you can build something real: for example, Vietnamese domestic league scores and schedules, Vietnamese-language match reminders, or an aggregator of licensed platform listings.

How to get users: Play search plus small-market category charts. Update titles and screenshots to match the match schedule, and send push notifications around match days.

When to get in: There is no window to talk about. Someone takes the Socolive term every season, and someone gets removed every season.

What would show this analysis was wrong: ① This package and its 4 sister packages survive the season without a takedown and installs climb into the hundreds of thousands. That would mean Play's review in this category is looser than it appears. ② A lightweight, legitimate Vietnamese app built around "free plus Vietnamese commentary," monetised with ads, takes off. That would be a real opportunity worth looking at again. ③ Conversely, if CPS EXPORTERS' whole account is banned within the year, that confirms the judgment in this piece.

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Data and sources: Google Play store and developer pages (11-06); public Google Play install data and the Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia sports category charts (10-29 to 11-06); estimates from AppstoreSpy and AppInsider; chrome-stats (contact email changes, same-name apps and takedown records), AppBrain, AppWinners, apppage.net; TikTok search for "socolive" (11-06); reporting from CafeF, VnExpress, Tinhte, ZNews, Tuổi Trẻ, 24h.com.vn and VTV. Where the text says "estimated," "inference" or "unverified," those are estimates and inferences.