• Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    5 days ago

    What’s an unfortunate set of circumstances that were completely unavoidable and impossible to predict unless you had an IQ greater than that of a sea pickle.

    It’s a good thing Donald Trump is an idiot otherwise he’d be utterly humiliated. Fortunately for him he’s incapable of such complex emotions.

    • SillyDude@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      They don’t care if you or any other poors boycott, your pennies mean nothing to them. There needs to be more protestors outside the cup than audience inside it. Clog the stroads. Chant until the words of outside reality break the fantasy within.

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        If you live there absolutely. If you don’t do not travel to the States. They aggressively do not like foreigners.

        Do not book a hotel room and fund the fascism machine in order to protest the fascism machine.

    • M137@lemmy.today
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      6 days ago

      Never done anything but that. Sadly that doesn’t matter, it will take SO MUCH before any boycott will have any actual effect on them, both from the average person and the ones putting in the real money, trading teams and players, building the stadiums etc. I have never had any interest in sports but my experience is that most people really like it but also have never given a single second of thought to the dealings of it all. It’s pure “Hurrdurr, team from my city/country make ball go into net or whatever make me happy”. It’s so fucking dumb.

    • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      It is the rich who are actually attending the games.

      We could do by not watching it, but a lot of people only talk and when action requires minor inconvenience they will give up.

  • dellish@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    OK. First, FIFA booking out a heap of hotel rooms then dropping them when they realised they won’t be able to scalp them is shitty behaviour, but probably not out of the norm. Raising prices to astronomical heights is also shitty behaviour, but it’s the capitalist nation of the world so what do you expect?

    The elephant in the room that got glossed over with one sentence in the article is: nobody in their right mind wants to visit the USA. The place is a fucking disaster and the chances of a foreigner getting shot, locked up or deported for pretty much no reason is so high you’ve got to be a total fuckwit to want to go there. If I was given a free ticket to the US with spending money included, I’d still be asking for a refund.

    I still hope the Canada and Mexico games are completely sold out though. Watching the juxtaposition of empty “free world” stadia vs full “shit hole country” stadia is going to be glorious.

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      5 days ago

      They won’t let that happen, they’ll give away tickets to homeless people to get bums on seats if that’s what it takes.

    • FanciestPants@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Yeah, dumbshits may not even deport you back to your home country. You from Egypt? Maybe just put you on this plane to El Salvador. Close enough, right?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      nobody in their right mind wants to visit the USA

      You don’t need that many people to fill a stadium. And anyone rich enough to travel around the world for a football match isn’t going to be the type that TSA bothers.

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Turns out people don’t want to come to your country when you harass them at the gate. Write that down, maybe we’ll remember it for later…probably not.

    • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      No qualms about all the slaves who died building the one in Qatar but if the wealthy might be inconvenienced, then it becomes an actual problem

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        No qualms about all the slaves who died building the one in Qatar

        Also relatively unattended. In part because of the atrocious reputation of the county. But far more because it was 50⁰ C on a cool day out there.

        The American Games don’t even have that excuse.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        5 days ago

        So far the immigration enforcement agency has managed to kill two people neither of them immigrants. Not that it would be better if they just killed immigrants, but at least they’d be sticking within their job description.

  • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    Thanks to everyone refusing to spend money in or toward my country right now, you’re literally keeping money away from an organization trying to terrorize and imprison us or worse.

    Screwing over FIFA is a nice cherry on top too.

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      I’m leaving the US and one of the first things I did was convert all my USD to local currency. I’m doing my best to actively extract from the US and bring it elsewhere, to hell with my home country

      • TheOctonaut@piefed.zip
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        6 days ago

        I’m confused as to why you think converting your money was a notable act? What was the alternative?

        • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip
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          6 days ago

          More people dumping usd means lower demand for it, potentially lowers it’s value. I know it’s more complicated than that and my contribution is basically pennies but I’m hoping it helps a bit

          • TheOctonaut@piefed.zip
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            6 days ago

            That’s… not how currency markets works. At all. Tell me, what do you think happened to the dollars?

            You essentially exported them. More US dollars are now in international use than before.

            As you said, not a significant amount in any way, but just bizarre to celebrate contributing almost nothing to the wrong outcome.

        • utopiah@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          They decoupled, they don’t have to follow US news and for each bad news hurt both psychologically and financially.

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              5 days ago

              Why would they keep their USD if they don’t spend it anymore and they clearly do not believe the country is going down a good path?

                • utopiah@lemmy.world
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                  5 days ago

                  Ah my bad, thought you were questioning their decision to do so whereas you’re actually saying it’s perfectly normal, right?

                  I guess they meant to highlight that they are “all in” and not looking back.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    So, a lot of tickets have been sold, but no hotels have been booked so far? Maybe ticket scalpers don’t need hotels?

    And why the heck should anybody travel to the US under the current administration, where ICE puts random people in concentration camps?

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Yep bunch of scalpers gonna be out cash…and honestly hope no one from a foreign country comes here until ICE is gone. I think people are realizing how dangerous it is to come here as a foreigner right now.

    • Malyca@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      I highly recommend people avoid the USA. It’s really bad. Yes, you will be arrested and the more time you spend in prison, the more money they get. So they won’t let you go for months/years. Don’t come here.

        • osanna@lemmy.vg
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          5 days ago

          Even before diaper Donnie took power, I still didn’t wanna go to the USA. It’s been a shit hole for decades. Longer than I’ve been alive

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      6 days ago

      i heard the scalpers were trying to sell it on the different subs related to the world cup, most of them get balked and thier posts getting deleted.

    • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      It’ll be fun zooming in on the “enhanced” crowd to see all the people with three arms and Francis Bacon faces.

    • FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Fuck Jerry Seinfeld though

      He was never funny anyway. The rest of the cast are hilarious, but his character was just irritating, like him IRL

  • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Fuck FIFA and their boot licking, corrupt bullshit. Somehow I think they’ve managed to be more corrupt than any of the US based sporting organizations.

    • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      FIFA is up there as one of the most corrupt organizations out there. There’s not a US sporting org that even comes close.

            • v_krishna@lemmy.ml
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              6 days ago

              Indy 500 has nothing to do with Formula 1. Different cars, different rules, different drivers, etc.

              • TheRealKuni@piefed.social
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                6 days ago

                Liberty Media owns Formula One Management (FOM), the company responsible for the production of F1 as a piece of media, while the International Automobile Federation (FIA) is responsible for the rule formula itself, the stewards, marshalls, race director, etc.

                So when the person said, “no one outside of the US has heard of either” they were wrong. Liberty Media certainly isn’t as well-known a name as Formula 1, but it owns Formula 1.

                • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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                  6 days ago

                  And Formula one is massively corrupt. F1 races are also hotbeds of human trafficking.

                  There may be some races, but ladies, that’s not why your husband is there.

                  IndyCar is run by a few billionaires who all support MAGA, and your government spends hundreds of millions of your taxpayer dollars supporting teams.

                  Roger Penske getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom for no reason.

              • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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                Who said F1 had anything to do with indycar? Fucking read?

                Indycar is broadcast in 200 countries. It’s just another big corrupt sport.

        • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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          I’m not familiar with the corruption of Indy 500 and I hadn’t heard of Liberty Media until reading this comment chain. Is Liberty Media a US based org or does F1 just have some events in the US?

          • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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            5 days ago

            Forget about the corruption. Who wants to watch a bunch of guys in Nomex drive in circles for extended periods?

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    If the World Cup has a lot of half empty stadia, I’d be happy.

    It might be interesting if the Mexican and Canadian stadia were full though.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        I don’t think a lot of Canadians or Mexicans are going to be able to afford to go to the games in their own countries. They may be hosting, but the ticket prices are absurd.

    • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      That will never happen. Based on some of the events and attendance of those events the World Cup will be fine. Everybody just won’t be able to charge 1000% markups.

      • fodor@lemmy.zip
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        6 days ago

        You said everything will be fine but the entire point is that’s not true… Things might be fine for ticket sales for the venues. But that doesn’t mean they’re fine for local businesses and local taxpayers who thought that they would be generating revenue for their local communities.

        And that’s the whole point, right? This is commercialized to perfection and everyone has their payouts cleanly carved out so that local communities lose. A few very large corporations win, and of course the international soccer organization is notoriously corrupt and has been, so you know that they’re getting their payouts.

        In other words, this is what happens when you have monopolies and capitalism is left unchecked. The customer gets f*****, local communities get f*****, some rich people make more money, and f*** them for being such greedy assholes.

          • ErmahgherdDavid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 days ago

            Like at London 2012 where there was a ban on chips (fries for our US friends) from anywhere that wasn’t McDs until backlash got strong enough. Imagine granting a single company the sole right to chopping potatoes into long sticks and putting them in hot oil for a few minutes. Even in the glorious 2010s and the days of the “millennial lifestyle subsidy” our ugly late stage capitalism was showing.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    The AHLA said this does not align with Fifa’s statement that more than five million tickets have been sold, external and it creates a risk that “the anticipated economic lift may fall short”.

    Lol…

    It’s obvious what’s happening, but it’s not as good as people are thinking.

    The reason to kets are so expensive, is American reselling processes.

    Scalpers ought up all the tickets immediately, and instantly relisted them for higher. New scalpers are buying those, and listing them again.

    Everytime they’re resold, another cut gets taken out by Ticketmaster. And Fifa is likely getting a piece of that in addition to their original piece.

    FIFA is going to make a shit ton of money. Scalpers may lose some, but what little “economic incentive” from the games won’t materialize, because we’re almost guaranteed to have a bunch of “unsold” tickets that were sold 4-5 times already.

    People already there may be able to capitalize on tickets being cheap right before games start as scalpers panic, but no one will travel short notice. And once the first games air with a bunch of empty seats, people will try to wait till last minute and buy tickets. Likely getting ripped off at the event and trying to enter with fake tickets

    The entire thing is going to turn into a giant cluserfuck, and that’s without ICE running around like they’re almost guaranteed to.

    You couldn’t pay me enough to show up in the general vicinity of one of these games

    • scytale@piefed.zip
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      6 days ago

      Everytime they’re resold, another cut gets taken out by Ticketmaster.

      Yep, this is why the scalper issue will never get resolved, because they also benefit from it. They will literally do every convoluted way to “prevent” scalping except the actual solution: resales can only be done at original ticket price or lower, and no reselling fees go to ticketmaster.

      • hraegsvelmir@ani.social
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        6 days ago

        That was pretty much how things worked for Ticketmaster in Norway when I had someone bail on going to a festival we were planning on attending together, as I recall. So it can be addressed, just probably need to be in a country with a functional government and regulations.

      • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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        I’d even be fine with resale prices limited to original sale price plus a nominal FLAT fee for ticket master.

          • Ech@lemmy.ca
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            6 days ago

            TM itself can fuck off, but a ticket supplier is providing a service, and transferring tickets is part of that service. Unless the seller is literally just handing physical tickets off to a buyer, the mediating service is using resources to facilitate the transfer, which costs them money.

            • mystik@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              How much does UPDATE tickets SET holder = @newuserid WHERE holder = @olduserid AND ticket_id = @ticketid cost?

              • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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                That depends, how comfortable are you with SQL injection directly from the webpage with no other security measures?

              • Ech@lemmy.ca
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                No idea, but I doubt it costs nothing to facilitate a secure transfer. And if scalpers are ever going to be deterred, systems like this will be necessary and have costs to do so. Obviously that’s not why TM takes their cut, but it will be an expense even in an ideal system.

          • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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            6 days ago

            Look, I hate Ticketmaster too. But there’s an infrastructure cost. I started with a percentage fee, but that leads to incentive for higher resale values. A nominal transaction flat fee not to exceed $1.00 would make sense

    • magnue@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Would be funny if the only people attending the games were the last scalpers left holding the bag like ‘eh may as well’

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        If they get resold 5 times, that’s four scalpers making money and one losing…

        That’s not gonna solve the problem, especially since Ticketmaster offers up tickets early to large volume buyers and even reserves huge blocks for them.

        Ticketmaster doesn’t give a fuck what the person who sits there actually paid or if the seat is empty

        Because everytime it resells, they get the same percentage of an ever growing number.

        The product is ticket sales, so they sell the same ticket as many times as they can.

        Empty seats won’t solve anything. And if it keeps happening it’ll end up like airplanes where they just sell someone else a new ticket at a discount and profit off the seat again.

        We need to actually fix it, and not just for the Cup

    • Akh@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Yep, ai got tickets direct from FIFA. Two decent seats (tier 2). They cost me $450 each. They are reselling for $1200+. I am not selling but hope the scalpers lose.