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One of the main points of promotion from Jeff Jarrett is that how important technology is and how that will be a big boom to wrestling fans and to his Global Wrestling Force promotion. Of course, the technology has to work for that to happen.
Much like Jurassic Park, where the chaos theory overtakes the best laid plans of John Hammond, the NJPW, which probably had as good a chance of anything of hitting the scene with something unique and fresh, had it's issues. Oh, there were issues.
On the cable front, a lot of companies opted not to carry the PPV live, specifically if they were serviced by InDemand PPV. InDemand ran last night's UFC PPV on their HD channels (one in English, one in Spanish) and used those channels for replays. This left the live broadcast on a third PPV channel that was only carried in Standard Definition and a channel that not all cable outlets carried. In hindsight, not that Jeff Jarrett and GFW could have been aware, but it may have been smarter to just push the Sunday airing to American fans because there were certainly fans let down they couldn't watch the show, or watch it in HD.
Time-Warner cable in New York City also had a meltdown, at least in four of the five boroughs, as their PPVs were unable to be processed. I ordered the live standard definition broadcast six days ago and when it came time for the PPV to air, my screen converted to a mute, black screen. This also happened to me last month while trying to order the ROH PPV, but again, it means that for anyone who wanted to watch the PPV in one of the biggest markets in the world, they were out of luck. Time-Warner had admitted there was an outage but has yet to offer any explanation of why this keeps happening when it's time to order major PPVs.
Then, the FlippsTV App sort of melted down as well. Unless you were using certain devices, you weren't able to live-stream the PPV using FlippsTV. That was certainly not explained correctly in the weeks leading to the show.
Then, if you were able to live stream it, their system was overloaded for the show and you received a cluttered, stuttering experience that for some, never stopped and for others, stopped halfway through the show. The show will be available as a repeat at 7 PM tonight as well as on VoD for 30 days from Monday the 5th. FlippsTV is offering refunds for those unhappy with the experience.
So, while the show was a lot of fun, chances are that if you wanted to watch it live, there were hurdles and frustrations that you had to go through in order to watch it - and all those things certainly take the wind out of you when you just want to enjoy yourself as a fan. Technology is great, but only when it works for you. This experiment shows there's still a lot of work to be done before it can work for the fan.
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