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THOUGHTS ON THE SALE OF RING OF HONOR AND THE POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES OF HOW IT WILL AFFECT THE COMPANY

This past weekend, prior to Supercard Of Honor VI in Chicago Ridge, ROH announced that it had been purchased by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a major media company that owns local network affiliates throughout the United States. This is obviously a huge deal for the company, which has gone through a pretty staggering number of changes over the last two and a half years that includes bookers coming and going, a two year stint on HDNet, frequent roster changes, and other such shakeups. This is bigger deal than all of those, one that will likely bring a lot of changes to the company, both positive and negative.

Let's start with the positives. First is the most obvious, that the company is now owned by a major corporation and will have a much higher level of financial backing than they ever have before. Cary Silkin did a lot of great things as owner of the company, and will remain with the company at a high level, but he's still one man and only had so much money to put into the product. We've seen in the past how other companies like WCW and TNA were able to go much further under corporate ownership than they ever would have had they remained with the original owners, and my first thought upon hearing about the sale was that if Sinclair Broadcasting sinks even a fraction of the money into ROH that Turner put into WCW, that sets them up to do a lot of great things they never would have been able to before.

Hopefully, this means that ROH can finally become a legitimate third place for wrestlers to make a good living outside of WWE and TNA. ROH, like ECW before it, has always had to deal with a steady cycle of people coming in for a few years before moving on to bigger money deals elsewhere. There's already talk about bringing in former WWE stars for their name value, and I'm hopeful that this means that guys who, because of their size or other factors may not be successful elsewhere, will have a chance to make a better living without having to move on.

Secondly, this purchase will mark the return of ROH to television, and broadcast TV at that as their new weekly show will air on the many stations around the country owned by Sinclair, beginning in September. Being carried on the Sinclair networks is huge because this will give them far better exposure than they ever would have gotten on HDNet, and one of the changes already being planned is production upgrades to improve the quality of the product for TV broadcast, but would presumably extend to non-televised DVD tapings as well. A lot of people were predicting doom for ROH after the HDNet seal ended, but I said at the time (and for years before) that at the very least, they could use the HDNet experience the same way TNA used the FSN deal: to build a history of producing weekly television so you have an existing TV product to shop around after the deal comes to an end, and ROH has done exactly that.

The acquisition could also lead to ROH running shows in new markets they hadn't previously had a regular presence in, since Sinclair owns stations in places like Baltimore, Nashville, Milwaukee, San Antonio, Tampa/St Petersburg, and Las Vegas. ROH had previously been mostly restricted to their main strongholds in the northeast and upper midwest and was leery of trying to go too far outside their comfort zone since they couldn't risk heavy financial losses if a new market didn't work out. This is no longer a concern, and I would expect them to start running regularly in Sinclair's home base of Maryland, and am reasonably certain we can expect them to try and dip into some of these other potential new markets.

But with the positives also come some potential negatives. The ROH roster and management team are both remaining intact and the word is that there won't be any major changes to the product just now, but the fact is that whenever a corporate buyout occurs, there is almost zero chance that everything's going to stay exactly the way it was. Cary's staying on board, but he's not the owner anymore and no longer has final say because the company now serves a different master. Hunter Johnston, Ross Abrams, and Syd Eick are all staying, but will now answer to Joe Koff from Sinclair, who will be assuming the role of COO of the company.

The good news is that Gary Juster will be coming on as Vice President of the company, and he has a very long history as a promoter for WCW and a lot of experience straddling the wrestling/ corporate line. Jim Cornette is getting more power in the company, and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in just about every aspect of the business with him, and will be a very valuable part of the team.

That said, we still don't know what kinds of changes we may be looking at going forward, and I would hope that the folks behind the wheel now will be able to steer the company away from another Jim Herd situation, but we won't know until we get there. Sinclair wants to bring in former WWE names that can work the ROH style, but we don't know if they're all going to be Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas types, or if they're also going to want some guys who aren't on that level athletically, but bring name value the same way SpikeTV wanted Sting and Kevin Nash because they had recognizable names even though they didn't bring as much to the table as everyone probably hoped.

Getting back to the TV side, Sinclair may own a lot of networks, but they're nowhere to be found in some pretty important places like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Atlanta. In other words, ROH will have no television presence in nearly every major market in the country. Sinclair will supposedly try and get the show syndicated outside their sphere of influence, and the show will also be streamed online for anybody who can't get it on TV, but this isn't going to get their product on TV in much more than medium-sized markets right out of the gate.

For as tumultuous as Ring of Honor's history has been at times, this will prove to be a bigger game changer than anything in the past. At the end of the day, I consider this to be an overwhelmingly positive move for the company, and even though thete are some negatives, most are mitigated by things like streaming the series online for people who won't recieve the show on TV. There will be some growing pains and probably changes that will have hardcore fans tearing their hair out, but at the end of the day I'm feeling very confident about the future of Ring of Honor and am going to be interested to see how this all shakes out over the coming months.

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