Crthuky

I remembered Ready Player One's dystopian setting, and then wondered what would sports be like in a dystopia?

This theoretical dystopia is a world that has been drained of most of its resources, like Ready Player One, except no super-good Virtual Reality like Ready Player One, and all sorts of countries are at war over the few resources, and everyone is trying to outlive the problems. With the lack of reliable internet (since electricity is a potato), what would sports be like?

Boil it down to it's simplest form. People tend to use what they have around and make a sport out of it. Maybe they have reverted to soccer played with an animals stomach or a bunch of plastic bags rolled into a make shift ball.

The dystopian future you give us has the constraint that there are no more resources and the world is fighting. This means get rid of any sports that require manufacturing (no killer death robots or F1 racing). If most of the world is fighting then get rid of international events and some/most/all government organization.

Sports would probably be very similar to sports you would find in the third world / developing countries (don't know which is the pc term). Simple pick up and play games that are not much different than anywhere else other than nothing is manufactured. Kids grab anything and start playing (a pipe or stick makes a good bat).

Since we have not enough constraints I'll just throw one of many possibilities out there.

Because safety in sports is almost directly linked to manufacturing and manufacturing is no longer used for recreational reasons (my assumption) sports are now much more violent. As safety products stopped being used people didn't adjust the intensity down but like normal humans started increasing intensity.

Almost all sports started degenerating into a form of gladiatorial game where full contact was allowed and fighting was encouraged. Jake Dow was the first world champion in chess to win by knock out.

Not long after, sports continued with the flow and some sports are now glorified versions of Russian roulette. Players pay an entrance fee to compete and claim a portion of what is left from the players who didn't make it.

This is a seriously broad question and will depend a lot on your setting.

With the lack of reliable internet(since electricity is a potato),
what would sports be like?

You're probably into large stadiums, with the government using it to entertain/distract the masses.

Disfavored types can be forced to fight to the death in heavily unfair fights. "Unfair" can be "unequal training", "unequal equipment", or even "poisoned/injured before the fight".

Or alternatively the whole thing can be rigged from start to finish with punch card "villains" and "heroes" who are actors with roles.

Or the gov may have totally outlawed violence/sports in any type and we can have very high stakes Chess games made with deadly outcomes. Massive sports boards showing every move, commentators talking about the life of pawn #7 and how ruthless the player was to sacrifice him but it was the correct move.

Or if it's not gov sponsored at all it could all be black market. Seedy bars with illegal fights.

It could be similar to the real life Mesoamerican Ballgame where the losers of the game where sometimes killed in a ritual sacrifice.

The association between human sacrifice and the ballgame appears
rather late in the archaeological record, no earlier than the Classic
era. The association was particularly strong within the Classic
Veracruz and the Maya cultures, where the most explicit depictions of
human sacrifice can be seen on the ballcourt panels—for example at El
Tajín (850–1100 CE) and at Chichen Itza (900–1200 CE)—as well as
on the well-known decapitated ballplayer stelae from the Classic
Veracruz site of Aparicio (700–900 CE). The Postclassic Maya religious
and quasi-historical narrative, the Popol Vuh, also links human
sacrifice with the ballgame (see below).

Captives were often shown in Maya art, and it is assumed that these
captives were sacrificed after losing a rigged ritual ballgame.
Rather than nearly nude and sometimes battered captives, however, the
ballcourts at El Tajín and Chichen Itza show the sacrifice of
practiced ballplayers, perhaps the captain of a team. Decapitation
is particularly associated with the ballgame—severed heads are
featured in much Late Classic ballgame art and appear repeatedly in
the Popol Vuh. There has even been speculation that the heads and
skulls were used as balls.