Ring of Honor President Tony Khan took decisive action last night following a major streaming failure that disrupted the Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view, moving the remainder of the event to YouTube for free and offering a full one-month credit to all current WatchROH.com subscribers. The issues stemmed from ROH’s streaming provider and impacted numerous fans attempting to watch the broadcast.
During the post-show media scrum, Khan detailed the technical problems and the reasoning behind his immediate response. “Tonight, our streaming provider had issues only with browsers,” Khan stated, according to Fightful. “I didn’t wanna have anybody that’s not included so I made a decision in the chair in the back while the show was happening. I put the show up free worldwide on YouTube… And I’m gonna give everybody a one-month credit, all the current subscribers.”
The technical difficulties, which began during the main card of the Philadelphia event, were attributed to the service provider, Brightcove. Khan confirmed the specific platforms that were affected. “At first, we thought it only was (Google) Chrome and Firefox, but then also, they said Microsoft Edge,” he explained. The decision was then made to open the stream to everyone via YouTube. Viewers using the Safari browser or the official ROH app were reportedly unaffected.
While acknowledging the significant financial impact of the complimentary month for subscribers, Khan framed the decision as a necessary step to satisfy fans and potentially attract a new audience. “That’s a lot of money — a month of subscriptions — I’m not gonna lie to you. We have thousands of thousands of subscribers. That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars that I’m gonna eat,” Khan admitted. “But it’s okay, because we made new fans… the fans got a great show tonight and it seemed like almost unanimously positive response on social media.”
The pivot to YouTube occurred during the ROH Pure Championship match between Lee Moriarty and Xelhua. Viewers who transitioned to the new stream reported a notable improvement in broadcast quality. In addition to the subscriber credit, Khan also made all previous Death Before Dishonor events available for fans to watch for free as further compensation.
Last night’s card from the 2300 Arena featured several key title matches, including Athena defending the ROH Women’s World Championship against Mina Shirakawa in the main event and Bandido defending the ROH World Championship against Hechicero. The event also saw the crowning of new ROH World Tag Team Champions and ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Champions.