@downix
Worse, they had action figures. No kidding! You could buy little ceramic models of top gladiators in action poses.
@KennyR
Nobody's really sure how much death there was - but remember that these were shows put on to prove the power and wealth of the sponsor, so in some cases a lot of people DID die, expensive or not.
The origin of gladiatorial combat was a funereal ritual combat to the death, and the concept of sacrificial death appears to have been important throughout the history of the games. However it became an entertainment industry, and the biggest stars became just too valuable to kill - although we do hear of Emperor Commodus having the victor in a combat killed because he claimed such a good fighter would make a really great sacrifice (it was more likely jealousy - Commodus was a very nasty man). Certainly if the top gladiators often survived, there were always cheaper slaves with little popularity or expensive training who could be killed. In some of the massive spectaculars, the death toll was in 4 figures.
Fatality rates aren't known - estimates vary wildly. I think we can assume that for top gladiators it would be around 5%, while there were other gladiators who were basically trained as victims for the famous gladiators, for whom the rate might have been 50% or so. What the average was is anybody's guess.
