By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

Ring of Honor COO Joe Koff held a conference call Tuesday to address recurring Internet PPV issues that have plagued ROH's recent live event offerings. Koff apologized for ROH not being prepared to handle traffic for their first in-house iPPV on Saturday, "Border Wars," and said they are prioritizing handling traffic for their next offering, "Best in the World," on June 24.

"All I can say is I'm sorry. I don't want anyone turned away from this," Koff said, emphasizing the strength of the product. "We have until June 24 - and certainly prior to that - to make sure this is right."

Koff said the main problem Saturday night was server overload. ROH tested their servers prior to the PPV, but not at full-speed to determine if they could handle real-time traffic. Koff tried to present it as a positive that ROH saw unprecedented demand for the iPPV. Higher demand than for previous iPPVs on GFL.TV may have been a factor, but Koff also indicated that customers repeatedly trying to log-in or view the iPPV stream at the same time compounded the problem.

Regarding PPV buys for Saturday's event, Koff did not give a number, but indicated it was 20-30 percent over the average for iPPV events on GoFightLive.TV. Koff also said they had an "incredible amount" of replay buys on Sunday and they will not suffer too much from offering refunds for customers who were unable to view the iPPV.

Asked why he thinks demand was up for the Border Wars event, Koff attributed it more to the line-up, specifically Kevin Steen challenging for the ROH World Title in his home country, over ROH bringing the show in-house, which made it much easier for fans to access the PPV not having to go through a third-party.

Asked why it took ROH about an hour to respond to an obvious problem during the iPPV, Koff said they needed to locate the source of the problem at their headquarters in Baltimore. It was then determined the issue was with the server, prompting ROH to communicate the issue on Facebook Saturday night.

Koff also addressed whether ROH went a cheap route to distribute the iPPV, then got burned, as suggested by former ROH head booker Gabe Sapolsky on Facebook Monday. Koff replied that he cannot refute perception, but he can refute credible sources. He said the company is "well-financed" and it's "not a money issue at all." Koff said they work with reliable people who are experts at what they do, and they believe it was a matter of not being prepared to handle traffic and demand. "It just happened to be an unfortunate call on our part," he said.

To ensure this does not happen again to avoid losing the trust of the customers, Koff said they will be looking at "external and internal options" to determine the best way to be prepared for June 24. Koff said they have Sinclair Broadcasting resources to help resolve the issue.

Asked for an overall message on why customers should invest in ROH again, Koff said, "They know the product. I think people want to forgive, as long as there's an effort to correct a problem and communicate it." Koff said he's aware a group of fans will write them off, but he hopes they come back for the next event due to the quality of the product.

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