Could "The Hunger Games" Be Real Someday?

Suzanne Collins 2008 book "The Hunger Games" and the movie of the same name have a fairly simple concept. In the not to far future, the government has divided the upper, middle, and lower class in a manner to oppress the 99% and allow for the 1% percent to live in absolute control and luxury. As part of their method of oppression, the government holds an annual "hunger games," where a male and female teenager from each of the twelve city-states are forced to come together into an arena to fight to the death. "The Hunger Games" brings up many interesting philosophical questions about entertainment, media, and government, but could there ever be a real life arena style sport where players fight to the death?

This last December, a new Russian reality show called "Game 2 Winter" was announced. The premise of the show has 30 participants attempting to survive for nine months in the below freezing Siberian wilderness. In addition to the bears, wolves, and frost bite, creator of the show Yevgeny Pyatkovsky has claimed the participants will also be allowed to kill each other saying "Everything is allowed. Fighting, alcohol, murder, rape, smoking." Not quite sure why drinking and smoking were included alongside murder and rape, but whatever. Now, players wont actually be able to murder and rape each other, as that is illegal in Siberia. The official rules of the game state "You must understand that the police will come and take you away [to arrest you]," but the game does not discourage such acts. Now why would the participants want to murder each other. Well, the winner(s) of the game will split a a sum of approximately 1.6 million dollars, and the fewer winners, the larger the portions. And to win, the players must survive the nine months with out calling in a helicopter to take them away, or dying.

The game will be broadcast live through the internet, on a pay to watch basis, through 9000 cameras spread around the three square mile arena. Each participant will in addition have a body mounted camera. Just like the hungers games from the books, viewers will be able pay to send care packages to their favorite players. 

Now the proposed rape and murder of the game are clearly just a marketing strategy, but could there someday be a "fight-to-the-death" style TV show? All that would need to be done to create such a show would be to find a place where such acts aren't illegal, and to do this, a company would merely need to buy an island that some how is not affiliated with any country's, thus not possessing any laws. For instance, if you murder someone on an unregistered boat, you will not be charged as because the boat is not associated with any country, and the murder took place in international waters, there is no where to charge the murder for their crimes. Loopholes like these make the possibility of their being a real life "Hunger Games" seem almost inevitable. Violent action movies/games and popular TV shows such as "Cops" have already proved there is an audience who would watch such a show, now we just have to wait as the media takes baby steps towards capitalizing on real life violence.