Ring of Honor COO Joe Koff held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon (5/15) discussing issues with the company’s “Border Wars” iPPV last weekend along with other company initiatives. Here are highlights courtesy of Prowrestling.net.
* Koff said an “unnprecedented number of people” attempted to sign in to view the “Border Wars” iPPV over the weekend and despite testing in advance, the servers couldn’t handle the amount of people logging in. He said he was proud of the response by ROH to issue a message apologizing for the problems. Koff added, “There’s no blame to be passed. We should have anticipated, we should have been better prepared, we weren’t.”
* Koff confirmed it took the company 55 minutes to acknowledge the problems with the iPPV problem. When asked if they would consider moving to traditional Pay Per View, Koff didn’t feel that the company was at the point where it would be a profitable venture.
* Koff believes that ROH is beating TNA in the markets that ROH airs in saying they are doing close to 2.0 ratings and not in the best of time slots. He added, “This program is performing very, very well.” Koff also confirmed that next year they would be increasing their syndication efforts.
* When asked about “shoddy camera work” and bad production, Koff mentioned the possibility of bringing in consultants in the future. A switch to HD is at the top of the priority list in 2013. Production issues with recent DVD releases were also “noted” by Koff.
* Koff confirmed that a little over 2,000 buys were generated in pre-sales for the “Border Wars” iPPV.
* Promises for the second fiscal year include bringing production to an HD level, delivering on all promises, expanded into other markets and growing current markets. Koff mentioned that the wrestlers have said they are getting more recognized in public more than ever before.