Ring Of Honor (ROH) executive Joe Koff recently spoke with CBS Sports for an interview. Below are some of the highlights.
On expanding ROH’s tours: “Well we always take into account the markets that have TV, and we look to see if there’s a match there. And if there is — does it make sense? So we have done that as we have grown our portfolio of stations. There are a lot of markets we already go to because they’re in large markets, they’re in big markets. It might open up the West for us, which we’ve been talking about anyway — expanding out further west than we go. So that that’s a real possibility, and probably we’ll see some markets being added that might be attributed to their being there or just because we would have gotten there anyway.”
On plans for ROH’s new streaming service and how pay-per-views could be handled: “Yeah, we have an app coming out in the first quarter. It really became developmentally the right time to do it. We saw an opportunity. We had a long discussion about it. We looked at the business model and how it impacts our business. We just felt that this was the time to create our own Ring of Honor stream. … Well we might continue [PPVs on] both. I would like to migrate personally to stream model, because a lot of people are watching on those devices anyway. And the quality is so good. And you know a lot of those boxes are hooked up to big sets and smart TVs and stuff like that. I’m not ruling out traditional pay-per-views, but the world is going that way.”
On the cease-and-desist situation between The Young Bucks and WWE: “To be really honest with you, that was between them and WWE. I think they handled it perfectly. If they were to ask me my advice, I would probably have advised them to do it the way they did it. This is beyond Ring of Honor. It’s nothing that happened under our watch. We didn’t have anything to do with it. They acted very responsibly. They are very, very good businessmen. Not only are they gifted performers, they are very good businessmen, and they’re smart about how they do business. I think in their minds — I don’t speak for them — it probably wasn’t worth a war.”
Check out the complete Joe Koff interview at CBSLocal.com.
