I want to know exactly how curious and alluring bloody violence is and how ‘civilised’ you think society has really become compared to 2000 years ago. It’s next Sunday A.D. A television network gets the go-ahead from state and federal authorities to televise deathmatches.
The participants are randomly selected from a pool of death-row inmates and volunteers. The volunteers are offered either $10 million or funeral expenses. The death-row inmate wins either life in prison or an early completion of their sentence. Both fighters are equipped with explosive collars - if there are no winners after 15 minutes, BOOM. SCOTUS rules that it’s both cruel and unusual, but so entertaining that they don’t care.
Their armour, equipment and weapons are chosen by random lot from a list of authentic gladiator types - so you may have a retiarius fighting with net and trident against a Thraex with a shield and curved sword, or a velite with a spear facing a dimachaerus with swords akimbo. The arena is equipped with spectator stands and cameras beaming the 15 minute show onto every TV - one match a day, repeated 24 hours until the next match airs. All matches are archived on the internets for free - ads provide the income.
Two questions - would you sneak a peek, even for a second? Would curiosity or bloodlust get the better of you? Secondly, what sort of viewing figures do you think the channel would get - how popular would modern gladiator games be, with fighters of the criminally greedy and the greedily criminal?
For viewing figures, I’ve gone with sports revenue to compare the popularity from major leagues.
You do know most classic gladiator fights weren’t to the death, an even when they were, the longer and more enthralling fights won the winner more fame.
Anyway, in answer to your question, you should look at mixed martial arts.
Sure do, but the network is worried that modern-day inmates and even volunteers would lose their nerve in the new arena if they were allowed to walk out at the end without scrapping. This makes for boring and therefore unprofitable viewing. The explosive collar was designed with this in mind - fighters know they must win or die, guaranteed action!
Right now mixed martial arts is about as popular as professional hockey. Most sports fans are just looking for some casual fun, not gore and suffering, so the audience for modern fight-to-the-death gladiatorial combat will be a fraction of that – I’m guessing maybe 10% of the market for MMA. That would put the audience down around pro soccer levels.
Where’s the choice for Mr. Kobayashi needs to hire a better marketer to develop his concept? A fifteen minute time limit then boom? And only one short little match at a time? I could turn it on watch the match, and turn it off without seeing a single commercial. And no one’s going to go to an arena to see a 15 minute match in person. Is this halftime entertainment at a football or NBA game?
Fix these issues, and it could be more popular, but until then, no more popular than soccer in the U.S. and Canada. And that only for a year or so until the novelty wears off. ETA: I’d watch a few times, but after that I don’t think I’d bother.
Probably a choice that was needed - the network may be interested in offering you a position of lanista or editor. However for now the format is just a test-of-concept that can be refined.
I’d love to say I wouldn’t watch it, but I’ve got a horrible feeling that eventually curiosity and temptation would overcome me, and then I’d feel depressed and wrong.
I wouldn’t want to watch, but I’m sure I’d check out one fight and then switch away in disgust.
I don’t think it would sustain ratings. I’d venture it’d be a bit like the defunct XFL. Some excitement and a TON of controversary to begin with followed by a rapid decline in ratings.
In any plausible scenario, a professional gladiator league would be about as popular as a professional jousting league (i.e., approximately $0 in revenues)
In the weird scenario posited in the original post, it’s impossible to say. It’s like asking “In a world where pi = 3 and hot snow falls up, what would be your favourite TV show?”
I would not be tempted to watch, I don’t even like fake gore. I’m down with porn performers wearing condoms. I’d feel like an asshole if I felt that performers of any kind had to risk death to entertain me, even if they are perfectly willing to, and I know some folks ARE perfectly willing to risk death just for the hell of it, but hell, not on my behalf, not once.
Ignorance fought! The Wiki link explains some things I’ve wondered about for about 35 years, ever since I read Asterix the Gladiator. He refers to one of the gladiators as a murmillo (maybe spelled mermillo?), and he addresses another as “Thracian”. I always wondered what those meant.
As for how popular it would be, that’s hard to say—that the revived event could come into existence at all almost by necessity implies that society has changed enough to allow it to do so, it which case it might be very popular, but that would be uselessly speculative.
Perhaps a better gauge would be if said games were hosted and broadcast by a rogue state or 3rd world country (North Korea? Somalia?), or some shady international organization (Cobra?) from an undisclosed location, how popular would they be? Even that, however, I’m hesitant to bet much on any guess I might have.
