So, on those days you’d pay extra for courtside, but could still find your view blocked by a hill or tree? You’d have a better view in the nosebleeds.
Tedium? If they wanted tedium an orator could read them St Perpetua’s diary. They’d be screaming for the slow, painful, and graphic deaths of her and her emo friends. Yeesh.
I remember reading in a guidebook that the Roman appetite for spectacle was so voracious that entire species were made extinct through combat in the arenas. Now, the guidebook was the 1990 Let’s Go Europe, so it may not have been as thoroughly fact-checked as the New Yorker…in any event, the Christians certainly had the better of it in the end, which is why, as I’m sure Kurt Warner will tell you, they play all four quarters.
According to this Wikipedia page, the European Lion may have been made extinct by Roman hunting, in addition to other factors. However, it’s not known if hunting them for sport in the arenas was a factor - it claims they pitted them against bestiarii and against other animals (but doesn’t mention prisoners or Christians).