I put up a Blutarsky

0-for-11 on my random draw application: eight (best-of-day, my judgment, though not exactly spoilt for choice) group-stage matches in the US (but none featuring USMNT), two quarters and the final. Applied for pairs for all 11 matches.

This is after my wife and I whiffed on at least three Visa pre-sales (not sure she applied to the second one) and I declined to plunder my American Aadvantage account in the AA pre-sale.

I honestly had no idea what to expect in the random draw but thought I would probably “succeed” on two to five matches. I also thought we would do better than 0-for-3 or 0-4 in the Visa pre-sales.

Very different from my experience applying for 2011 Women’s World Cup, 2012 London Olympics, 2015 Rugby World Cup, 2017 World Track & Field, 2020/21 European Cup and 2021/22 World Track & Field.

Closest analogy would be to whiffing on the T&F at the 2012 Olympics, though we did quite well on many events and spectacularly on the swimming.

We’ll see if I get motivated on the secondary market, but I don’t live close enough to any of the venues to make a day-of or even a day-before decision …. and those are the best chances for favorable secondary-market prices.

It may sound like sour grapes now, but my view evaluating which matches to apply to was that there’s a low percentage of compelling group-stage matches, there isn’t enough group-stage “jeopardy” with too many sides advancing, and a round-of-32 knockout is just too much. (Maybe 24, akin to Champions League now)

I still think there will be quite a few matches where they will struggle to sell all the tickets, as there will surely be quite a few nations that don’t travel in large numbers and numerous group matches have a “who cares” whiff about them. I went to the Bulgaria-Germany quarter at Giants Stadium in ‘94 — couldn’t have been 100 Bulgarians there, certainly not enough for a “Go start Lufthansa” chant as the 2-1 upset came into view.

Thinking back to that one, tons of tickets freed up for the semi, as Germans didn’t have any interest in Bulgaria-Italy. So one tactic may be to wait for a large nation to get knocked out and buy when their supporters are recirculating tickets in copious numbers.