Ring of Honor sold to sinclair broadcast group

BRISTOL, PA. (MAY 21, 2011)–Ring of Honor Wrestling owner, Cary Silkin, announced today the sale of the promotion to Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., one of the largest television broadcasters in the country and which owns and operates, programs, or provides sales services to 58 television stations in 35 markets across the United States.

ROH, currently the third largest wrestling promotion in the country, just celebrated its ninth anniversary, and Mr. Silkin is excited about taking the next step towards increasing the company’s visibility and expanding its operations.

“We have been waiting for and working for this opportunity for quite some time”, he said, “and of our 9 years in business, there has been no better roster of wrestlers than this one to expose the ROH product to the masses. With Sinclair’s resources and many avenues of distribution, we believe many new fans around the world will be as captivated as those who have followed Ring of Honor over the years.”

The month of September will see the debut of the new Ring of Honor television program which will be syndicated across the Sinclair network of stations, and with it, ROH will become the only wrestling promotion in the United States with a major, multi-market presence on broadcast TV. But if you don’t live in a market with a Sinclair station, fear not, says Mr. Silkin. “Through our revamped website we will be able to make the TV show available to anyone in the world with internet access.”

Sinclair officials are enthused about the project as well.

“We are very excited about this acquisition,” commented Steve Marks, COO of Sinclair’s Television Group. “Television and professional wrestling have a long history of successful partnerships and driving viewership. Unfortunately, the broadcast networks have not protected that relationship, allowing professional wrestling to migrate to cable network distribution. We believe that the powerful promotional platform that our TV stations provide, coupled with our 22% share of the U.S. TV households, will allow ROH to achieve name brand recognition and grow its share of the wrestling market. When you consider the makeup of our station mix and the number of CW, MYTV and FOX affiliates we operate, this is a perfect fit for our viewer demographics.” Mr. Marks also noted, “Longer-term, we can envision syndicating ROH wrestling to broadcasters in markets where Sinclair does not have a presence, and even internationally.”

Mr. Silkin assures the ROH fans worldwide that they will be seeing the same exciting, hard-hitting style of pro wrestling that they have become accustomed to. “We have established the name Ring of Honor as synonymous with the best in-ring action in the sport. The only thing that will change is that it will now be easier for fans around the world to follow. Our visibility will increase greatly–our production will be upgraded–but the work ethic of our incredible talent roster and our athletic style of wrestling will remain the same. This is what our fans have told us they want, and we will continue to give it to them.”

The current front office staff, including Cary Silkin, Syd Eick, and Ross Abrams, will remain with ROH going forward. Hunter Johnston, a favorite of ROH fans for years as the masked grappler Delirious, will still handle matchmaking, Jim Cornette will remain as executive producer, and other familiar faces like ring announcer Bobby Cruise and senior referee Todd Sinclair will be in place.”

Additionally, longtime wrestling broadcaster Kevin Kelly, already the voice of ROH internet pay-per-views, will assume the TV play-by-play chair this fall. Veteran NWA and WCW promoter Gary Juster will come aboard to be in charge of live event operations, which are planned to continue in current ROH markets as well as expanding into new locations concurrent with the increased TV exposure.

Mr. Cornette, who along with Mr. Johnston, will be in charge of talent and matchmaking, sees this as a new beginning for pro wrestling. “This is not old-school wrestling, and it’s not sports entertainment,” said Mr. Cornette. “This is wrestling for the 21st century, a new style developed by fresh, young stars that incorporates wrestling, mixed martial arts and high-flying, high-risk action with unique personalities, and it’s showcased by a sports-based presentation completely different from any other product out there. In my 30 years in the sport, it’s the most exciting live-event wrestling experience I’ve seen, and I’m thrilled to help bring it to broadcast TV.”

A major press conference, open to wrestling press and mainstream media alike, is being planned for Baltimore on Friday, June 24th. This event will feature a number of the ROH staff and wrestlers both announcing news about ROH’s future and answering questions. The media event will be presided over by new ROH COO, Joe Koff. Mr. Koff, a longtime Sinclair executive with an extensive background in TV sales and management, also has experience in pro wrestling television production and syndication. Most visible of his projects may have been the first-ever live, prime time syndicated pro wrestling events, the Battle of the Belts, which aired from 1985 to 1987. These Championship Wrestling from Florida-based cards were broadcast live to a syndicated network of stations and may be best-remembered for the classic Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham NWA World Title contest from St. Petersburg.

The press event will kick off a weekend which includes ROH’s next internet pay-per-view event, “Best In The World 2011,” live from the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Sunday, June 26th at 4PM EST. In addition to all the top stars on the ROH roster, this event will feature the return of some favorite stars from Ring of Honor’s past, and can be ordered by anyone in the world with internet access through Gofightlive.tv for only $14.95. More information about Ring of Honor can be obtained through their website, www.rohwrestling.com.

they are affiliated abc,cbs,fox and mynetwork tv

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Sinclair-owned_stations


source : http://www.rohwrestling.com/news/ring-of-honor-announces-sale-to-sinclair-broadcast-group/

This is fantastic news! Really hope this extra exposure helps push the company to the next level.

Just now 100% sure what they mean by the revamping of there video section on the website, are they going to post the show up after it has happened or do we only get to watch it live?

he only thing that will change is that it will now be easier for fans around the world to follow

hopefully means will be on channels worldwide

This is tremendous news, I had heard Silkin was in danger of going under, ROH can hopefully put the frighteners up TNA and WWE

The TV Deal will be similar to the HDNet deal, shown weekly but PPV's will still be in DVD format, suppose you can still find them on the net somewhere.

I would hope they will film differently this time, taping 8 TVs in a few days wasn't working

this sounds like fantastic news for ROH - they deserve more exposure and are 10X better than either WWE or TNA. As long as they remain committed to the philosophy of the product that they have developed over the past 9 years then I think this will be a great new age for ROH and hopefully wrestling fans will be satisfied with a product that delivers in the ring consistently (by which I also mean in the way its booked). I'm very happy about this news!

Thought that this was an excellent blog post regarding the sale:

The second biggest news from the weekend was the sale of ROH to the Sinclair Broadcast Group with the intention that the buyer would produce a new television program for syndication. After the initial buzz died down, the big question was "is this a big deal or not?" I tend to think it is. The sale really doesn't have a lot going for it right now. SBG is not a household name for one. I had to do a double take and look them up to find that they're not a network so to speak, but a company that owns local affiliates, mostly for former My Network TV stations, the CW and Fox. On the surface, that's a good thing. Getting ROH on network TV, even if it's only in syndication, gives it penetration that HDNet couldn't dream of giving it...

...until you look at the fact that SBG's market coverage is spotty at best. It's absent from New York, Los Angeles/Southern California, Chicagoland, Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay, Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix just to name a few of the large markets SBG has no presence in. It's unclear whether they have an expansion plan to get into bigger markets on actual television, but for now, insofar as getting more eyes on the product? It's not going to be as effective as they might hope.

However, there is one thing that I think might help defray that initial lack of market coverage, and that's the Internet. ROH will be taking the lead of NWA Hollywood and will stream each episode through their site (and given that Dave Lagana is a behind-the-scenes guy for both companies, that's not surprising). Doing that before they had a TV deal would have been costly, but now that SBG is going to foot the bill for the tapings? It becomes a no-brainer. NWA Hollywood is only broadcast on one terrestrial station as far as I know, so given that ROH will be on between 20-30 will at least bring in more advertising revenue to help defray the costs (which will most likely be minimal) of streaming it online.

So just like that, ROH is now ready to get back into the television game and is already in better position than what they were in on HDNet, ESPECIALLY if there's some kind of advertising push put behind it, well, something more than a Twitter/social media campaign or viral advertising that is. I partially blame the HDNet program's failure on an absurd lack of advertising, which coupled with HDNet's pathetic market penetration, did it in.

Now, I know I intimated that I'd lay off the business side of things, but that was a bit too much to ignore at this point. Still, this has to mean something for the quality of the fed, right? Yeah, I think it does, but how it'll affect the company won't be known until they actually start taping programs later on in the summer. My biggest problem with the HDNet show from a content standpoint was that it always felt like it was just unimportant window shopping for the house show and DVD business. The matches were good at times, yes, and they did have the Television Championship and Future Stars tournaments, but other than that, it felt incomplete, like they would focus on one feud for the next big house show or iPPV in the promos and build-up, but the matches wouldn't reflect it in there. And don't tell me it was because they only had one hour. I'd bet that the HDNet show had more total run time than NWA Hollywood's current KDOC show, but the latter does so much with that hour that it's a cohesive, made-for-television show. When you're WWE, and you have RAW and Smackdown to advance angles, you can afford to have a show like Superstars. When you're ROH, you can't.

If they're going to try and do TV, they need to go all-in with it. They need to make the most of what they have and develop angles that play for TV and play to build up the iPPV events. It's the Teens now. While I can watch wrestling for wrestling's sake, I always like to know that the company has some kind of story to accompany most of their matches. The days of house shows-as-driving-model are over. If they want to revolutionize pro wrestling, they need to do it on TV. Show a wider audience that you don't need to emulate 1998 WWF to make good TV. Show that professional wrestling is still alive. Are they up to the task? I hope so, and I remain somewhat optimistic, especially if Lagana has any kind of input on how things run.

Now, I'm optimistic but realistic. There are a lot of red flags with this, including ones raised by Eric Gargiulo and K. Sawyer Paul. However, the fact that they're on TV and now have a much better market penetration with the Internet-broadcasting included than they did before is still a positive in my book. If you get the product out there, then people will find it, and it can grow. Hopefully, ROH's luck is better this time around.

http://wallsofjerichoholic.blogspot.com/2011/05/roh-sale-thoughts.html

I've always felt Lagana understood the business, I've got confidence in him, I was also sure ROH would do TVs, I just think it would be mad if a big Company like them wouldn't put them on TV

the only way it could be better news is if they were broadcasting in the uk