ROH had a strong growth year, having by far its best year ever when it came to live attendance, doing sellout business in 1,000 seat buildings all over the country. When the Sinclair deal was put together, the business model was that they would be a success if they could draw 750 per show, with the idea they were doing 300 to 500 and television would be able to bring that figure up. At first, that didnt happen. It is likely expenses are higher now, as there are wrestlers on better paid contracts, and using outside talent like A.J. Styles and The Young Bucks, not to mention the New Japan stars, isnt cheap. Right now with ROH, there are no signs of great aggressive expansion, but it is the one promotion where attendance is up across the board and it is the one promotion actually making money.
Whether you say its more by default, they are the clear No. 2. Yet on Wednesday night, TNA blows them away when it comes to ratings. ROH can sell tickets because hardcore fans know they are getting great matches. But the lack of names casual fans would know, and even more, the production values of the television show, have limited any ratings growth, and ultimately, the key to the business is television. Sinclair has never been aggressive with its wrestling product, and the production values of the show are the prime example, as a company owned by a major network looking the way it does is almost baffling. Except, Sinclair clearly picked this up to be cheap original programming with the idea as a company it could be self sufficient, or close to it, running live events. They're on a slow growth pattern, but they are also clearly not a big priority to their network, so are always in danger of the wrong executive who doesnt like wrestling getting into power.
ROH was talking TV deals with major cable companies all year, including some talks with Spike that, if they included better production as part of the package, would have been a game changer. But they ended up with the same Destination America that TNA was on, but it was a deal for exposure as it doesnt appear Destination America was paying anything for ROH. And they did no advertising for ROH, while continuing to advertise TNA, since they were paying for that one.
But on the same night, TNAs viewership dwarfed that of ROH, and ROH quickly lost its 8 p.m. time slot and is now only at 11 p.m. Its contract with Destination America runs out in early December. Theyve seemingly solidified their relationship with New Japan, which is a key deal because their top talent can work with the worlds No. 2 group, and the top stars of New Japan worked more regularly for ROH, and the joint shows were huge successes.
