In an official statement to PWInsider.com, Ring of Honor officials stated they would be no longer broadcasting their major events live after problems with the iPPV feed during “Best in the World” on Sunday. The statement said that ROH would be moving towards a Video on Demand format to, “present a flawless show to truly depict the excellence of our product”. There is no word on if the VOD would be shown on the same day as the event or not.
Ring of Honor originally popularized independent wrestling pay per views online back in 2009 with Final Battle. iPPV feed quality was very strong back then and did not drop until the sale of ROH to Sinclair Broadcasting, an American telecommunications company in 2011. Feed problems reached “refund” status around Showdown in the Sun in 2012 where the start of the show had syncing issues with the sound and video and ROH immediately dropped the highest quality feed without telling viewers. It was soon explained the reason was they tried to do live PPV in an arena ill-equipped for such a venture. ROH fans accepted this reason. ROH iPPVs did not improve so they dropped their internet PPV provider of Go Fight Live. With a new in house team, fans begrudgingly accepted this explanation. However, the company’s test for their next iPPV outing Border Wars was a free match featuring Bryan Danielson and CM Punk. It ended up crashing their server. Amazingly, their reason was that they didn’t think they would get as much bandwidth. In other words, Sinclair Broadcasting did not expect the costs of having a live broadband broadcast of an event.
For over a year now, ROH events have been plagued with technical issues, including the past two shows where many viewers missed a major title switch during Wrestlemania weekend and now Best in the World 2013 where fans were dropped in and out of the feed. During Wrestlemania weekend, ROH was reluctant to give refunds and preferred to offer discounts. This time, they gave full refunds when requested.
The decision to move to VOD is a smart one. The allure for live PPV was a benchmark back in the 90s for Extreme Championship Wrestling to proclaim themselves as part of “The Big Three”. Today, it really doesn’t matter if you see it live or not when you’re the size of Ring of Honor. The extra costs to ensure fans “see it first” before they can read results is much less of a concern. ROH is already running TV on tape. There is hardly a market for bootleg wrestling anymore so someone filming the show and posting it on YouTube isn’t much of a concern. Allowing live fans to see the show before Internet viewers will actually allow ROH live tickets to feel more important. “See it live! See it first!” so to speak. Nobody is really going to consider seeing the show as undervalue if it’s VOD since that will be the only way to see it. Finally, it goes along with ROH’s current Internet viewing practices for their TV show. You can watch it any time you want to on their website once the episode is released. Those at the tapings live see it first. Then those watching on a Sinclair Broadcasting channel see it next. Finally, those on the Internet see it. Not exactly a disappointment for viewers. ROH still gets a solid number of viewers.
This decision should save ROH some money and ensure the episode runs simply on a loaded stream instead of having to be on a live stream. Less hassle and much easier to manage the traffic. Now important moments of matches won’t be missed because you can just rewind if needed. No more jokes about nobody saw Jay Briscoe win the ROH Heavyweight Championship. It might feel like ROH is a smaller promotion because of this but who cares anymore? It’s a monopoly in the wrestling business now. There is no “Big Three” which was always just the Big Two. The real question is why Sinclair Broadcasting was so clumsy in coming to this decision. There was a lot of money and loyalty lost on these haphazard iPPV broadcasts. Why can’t they do something Pro Wrestling Guerrilla and New Japan Pro Wrestling seem to do with little or no issue? Was it money, incompetence or both? If more people watch ROH now due to Sinclair Broadcasting television, it certainly isn’t due to being a stronger product. ROH has nowhere near the momentum they used to, but at least they seem to have finally fixed their pay per view problem.
Then again, I wait in baited breath as to whether or not people can even watch the show properly on Video on Demand. It isn’t like ROH deserves the benefit of a doubt anymore when even Kevin Steen is making fun of the incompetence on his Twitter.
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