Ring of Honor Announces HonorClub: New Streaming Service, Fan Club Combination

Late Friday night, Ring of Honor revealed the imminent launch of HonorClub. Just what exactly will fans get with a membership?

In the 21st Century, wrestling promotions have been hopping on the digital streaming bandwagon. WWE got the ball rolling in a big way with the launch of the WWE Network nearly four years ago. Several independent promotions have followed suit – Beyond Wrestling (now with Powerbomb TV), CHIKARA, Progress, CZW among them. And other major promotions like New Japan have their own streaming service. But Ring of Honor was among the notable promotions to be absent from this form of product consumption.

That all changed Friday night, as ROH finally announced the “imminent launch” of HonorClub (h/t to Joshua Gagnon at Wrestling Inc.). No word on an official launch date yet, but for ROH fans, it’s sure to be welcome news.

But Ring of Honor is taking things one step further in their foray into digital streaming. Besides online content, HonorClub is a sort of rebrand of their “Ringside Membership” fan club. With a membership at any level (more on that in a bit), fans will have early access to tickets for ROH events, plus special discounts on ROH merchandise. There’s also the official ROH Forum, to get the Ring of Honor discussion off social media and into one convenient location.

That’s a good angle for ROH to take. Many of the other promotions don’t offer anything beyond a free month for their subscribers. Ring of Honor going the extra mile to provide something else shows their desire to reach a bigger part of the audience. If someone wants to pay $9.99 a month to watch ROH events, getting 15% off a Dalton Castle shirt is a nice bonus.

But there’s a slight catch – HonorClub offers multiple membership levels, and some of the events fans would want to watch are only included in the “VIP Membership.” There’s a standard level membership for $9.99 per month. You can also pre-pay for a year at $99.99 and save some cash, which is nice (CHIKARA offers a similar discount for bulk month purchases on CHIKARAtopia).

For your standard membership, you get the fan club deals, and access to the ROH Video on Demand library. The VOD Vault contains the ROH TV Archive, as well as “historical events, compilations, interviews, and more,” per ROH’s official statement. There’s also live streaming of ROH On Tour events, which go to the vault after the live stream ends.

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You may notice that pay per view events weren’t listed in what you get with your standard membership. That’s because you still have to buy the pay per views individually – you get a 50% discount on them as a member, though. If you want pay per views included, you’ll need an Annual VIP Membership, which is $119.99.

It may seem kind of silly to charge “extra” for the pay per views, but a closer look at the numbers reveals that the VIP Membership is the same price as twelve months of the standard, just paid up front without the discount. For an “extra” twenty bucks, why wouldn’t you become a VIP if you could pay up front?

In general, ROH’s HonorClub seems like a logical step for the promotion to take. Digital streaming services are the way of the future, so adding their own is ideal. The added bonus of a fan club is something most other promotions don’t do – though WWE has brought up some of those ideas in surveys for the WWE Network.

Next: Omega vs. Cody Announced for Supercard of Honor

Will you subscribe to HonorClub when it launches?