AEW and ROH President Tony Khan addressed the technical issues that plagued the start of the ROH Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view and explained his decision to make the show free for everyone on YouTube. During the post-show media scrum, Khan detailed the situation with the streaming provider, Brightcove, which caused issues for viewers on several major web browsers.
“Tonight, our streaming provider had issues only with browsers, and if anybody’s a fan, and if anybody’s affected by it, 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… Really everybody should be able to get that credit, and I heard it was only on certain browsers. At first, we thought it only was (Google) Chrome and Firefox, but then also, they said Microsoft Edge. So I said, ‘You know, if it’s affecting those people, everybody should be able to just watch it for free on YouTube’ and we’ll rectify it with the streaming provider, Brightcove, that was responsible…”
Khan acknowledged the significant financial cost of his decision but stated that creating a positive experience for the fans and gaining new viewers was more important.
“The show we delivered was fantastic, and then I think new fans must have seen it. It was a well-received choice. People thought it was a good thing to do, and you know, 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 with a month subscription but it’s okay, because we made new fans. I’ll rectify it with the people responsible on the other end and the fans got a great show tonight and it seemed like almost unanimously positive response on social media… “
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