ROH COO Joe Koff Discusses Deal with Destination America

Ring of Honor Chief Operating Officer Joe Koff was a recent guest on the “Against The Mat” professional wrestling podcast. Within his time on the show, Koff spoke in-depth about ROH’s new television deal with Destination America.

Koff revealed that the deal had been coming together since November of 2014, around the time “Impact Wrestling” was dropped by Spike. Despite the deal being discussed for months, Koff and ROH were able to keep it under wraps:

“It actually began sometime late last year. It was right around the time that Spike decided not to carry Impact Wrestling anymore, and they ended up moving over to Destination America. And around that time, once that was announced, because we’re [Sinclair Broadcasting] a broadcasting company, and we’re in the television business, we have a lot of contacts at other broadcasting companies. One of my colleagues high in the organization made a contact over at Discovery, which owns Destination America, which turned into a lunch with the Destination America people. From there, we conversed about the possibility of making Destination America the destination for wrestling in America. That’s really how it all started.”

“I think I have a little bit of experience in this, in that, when we [Sinclair] bought Ring of Honor that also was not leaked until it was announced when we bought it. I’m from a business background, and we are a big company that does lots of deals and transactions, and we just know how to keep things to a minimum, and keep people to a minimum as far as their involvement. I think we’re pretty good at it, and I think this bears that out.”

Listen to the entire podcast, here. Koff also hit on the reputation professional wrestling has among advertisers and television networks.