Nate Bukaty

But I think we also have to remember that a lot of travel is not going to happen until people know who and when is playing where, which we have a quarterfinal game.

We have a knockout round game here.

That will change the numbers on a lot of things as well.

And I wonder as we're now getting upon it if people in the region might not see, hey, by the way, the hotels aren't as expensive as they said they were a year ago.

Let's go make a trip.

Let's go to Kansas City.

Let's be a part of it.

I think people got scared off by the reports of how big the crowds were going to be, too.

But the only part that I feel qualified to say is that in my experience watching World Cups, I feel like there's a life cycle to the event itself.

And

There's usually a life cycle leading up to the competition of negativity.

And about legitimate things, like not things that I would sit here and try to poo-poo in any way.

There's corruption.

There's global conflict.

You know, there's all kinds of things.

I mean, the two World Cups ago was in Russia.

The last one was in Qatar.

There were all kinds of stories at that time coming out about human rights atrocities and building the stadiums in Qatar.

And they're, you know, the way that their government policies were towards, you know,

people of the LGBTQ plus community, things like that, like they were getting arrested, you know, and those reports were all very legitimate.