World Cup Fever!

My friend Mark and I got together at his house yesterday morning to watch Czechia play South Africa in a World Cup match that took place at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. The game was pretty boring, I'm afraid, with little action, and ended in a 1-1 tie. I checked on the internet, and prices for the game were fairly reasonable for a World Cup match, going for a median price of $460, meaning that a fan going to the game in person only had to shell out approximately $500 to watch a bad soccer game. World Cup Fever is hitting North America pretty hard, especially here in the U.S. But the main cause of this malady is not the mad desire to attend these soccer matches, but the high price of tickets to World Cup games people actually want to watch. Tickets to today's game between the United States and Australia, being played in Seattle, are currently going for $2,000 and up in the nosebleed sections and $3,000, $4,000, and even $5,000 each closer to the ground. Which is crazy. This is all due to the invention of "dynamic pricing," in which higher prices are charged depending on the demand for tickets. This wonderful system is why you have to pay $100 for an Opening Day ticket to watch the Colorado Rockies at Denver's Coors Field that will cost $30 the next day. No wonder fans are coming down with fever. And yes, the photograph above is of Mark in front of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, teleported there through the magic of Photoshop. Which is far more interesting than being teleported to a Waffle House, as a high-ranking Trump Administration official claims happened to him. Nothing but the best and brightest for that regime.