By: Jason Seol
A few years ago, my friends and I read a news report that some games of the FIFA 2026 World Cup would be hosted in Vancouver. This was “breaking news” for us, as we were all locals in Vancouver and our favourite hobby was watching soccer highlights and talking or debating about them.
After we finished reading the news report, we thought we could change our lives in some ways, and started saving every penny we could to buy three tickets to witness the game in person. However, we didn’t know back then how expensive each ticket was.
A few years later, when each of us had collected $500.00, we thought it was enough for all of us to see the game. So, when we opened an official ticketing website called StubHub and saw the list of games in Vancouver, we realised that the ticket price for one person was over our $500.00 expectation. More specifically, each ticket was about $ 1,000.00, far out of our budget.
Five or six tickets were being sold each minute, and there was no time for us to think. We had to decide if we were still going to buy one ticket, for one of us to see the game, or just give up the hard work and effort we put in to get this far.
We all decided to give up on the hard work and effort we had put in. After we made up our minds and closed the computer, I remember that we were either very frustrated or very depressed. Maybe a little bit of both.
Then, a couple of hours later, all three of us got back to the computer and agreed that it was better to watch the soccer game on our digital devices than in person. We all knew we wanted to see the soccer game taking place in our city, and we all knew we blew up the chance that would likely never come around ever again.
In the end, we all agreed that keeping our ten-year friendship together was better than one of us going to see the game in person.