people try to nail down definitions of words that are only loosely defined. You know the fight scenes in movies where a fight breaks out in a bar, and before you know it, everybody is fighting everybody? That's a battle royale. Is it a fight to the death? not usually. Have some people used that phrase to refer fights to the death? yes.
lower case, battle royale is just an expression in English that anybody is free to use to describe a conflict that had some aspect of getting out of control.
> ...and they are not organized into teams. Here, the title qualifies Battle Royale...
> lower case, battle royale is just an expression in English that anybody is free to use to describe a conflict that had some aspect of getting out of control.
Anybody is free to use any word in way they want. However, using words in common ways will help prevent confusion. For example, "battle royale" (or "battle royal") is mainly used to refer to "A fight involving three or more individuals, teams, or factions; fought until one person, team, or faction is left standing" (from Wiktionary). Using battle royale to mean something else will lead to confusion among most English speakers.
> but in this incident they were organized in teams
And this particular discussion about the article was about the misuse of the term Battle Royale, specifically the use of term to describe combat with two teams instead of many.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/battle_royal#English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royal
books.google.com search "battle royale" in the 19th century, you'll see talk of ladies squabbling and how to conduct a mass cock-fight