A long time ago ( - in the future), the armies of Earth and the United Aligned Worlds went to war with the Skaarj Empire after a bit of a diplomatic incident between an escaped prisoner and their queen. To keep up with the rapidly escalating costs of a major interplanetary military campaign, the recently formed New Earth Government established a number of asteroid mining colonies around their own star system. But harsh working conditions and poor wages inevitably resulted in violence and riots among the miners. Obviously, the simplest solution was legalized "consensual murder" - a corporate-sponsored techno-gladiatorial combat-to-the-death for TV. Smaller mining companies have been running smaller matches to channel aggression, but now the Liandri Mining Corporation established a professional league, which quickly proves to be an extremely lucrative way of public entertainment.