The 2020 edition of the Laver Cup is coming to the Boston Garden in late September and pre-sale tickets went on sale March 3rd. As one of the fans that made sure to be present with email waiting, browser open and credit card in hand, it seems as though concern over the corona virus disrupting the event was not in evidence.
Waiting in the Laver Cup Queue
The email link to purchase from Ticketmaster arrived at 9:04 EST (4 minutes late!) and I clicked into the queue as fast as humanly possible. Then the page sat while I was left to ponder … was I really in a fair queue, had the server crashed, what’s taking so long? Five minutes passed. I opened a second browser just to make sure … would they throttle me for using the same IP twice, would they favor one browser over another, what’s taking so long? Fifteen minutes passed. I turned the wifi off on my phone and got in the queue with that device as well … still waiting … Forty-five minutes had passed. Finally at about and hour and 15 minutes the second browser window gave me purchase options (they did seem to prefer Chrome over Safari) … all was well in the end.
We will no doubt soon hear about overall ticket sales but judging from the line at the pre-sale door it seems as though people are serious enough about getting to see Federer play in Boston that the corona virus can go shove it. No doubt we are all assuming and hoping that the outbreak will be on the wane, and hopefully over with, by September but it is interesting to consider that Roger Federer is a better tonic to combat virus concern and provide a positive outlook than Trump, Pence and the various health officials trying to get the stock market out of free fall.
There is a lot of uncertainty on both topics. The new corona virus is deadly serious business to be sure and worthy of the concern it is getting but all predictions at this time are certainly premature.
Roger Federer is currently recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery and the outlook there has no comparison to a possible pandemic but it is still also too early to know how well he can recover for the level needed to compete at the highest level of such a physically demanding sport. Perhaps it is ironically helpful that he is not traveling now and thus limiting exposure as the tour moves to the large tournaments of Indian Wells and Miami.
The real subject here is one of outlook and optimism. It could be said that these are significantly positive parts of Federer’s brand. People are simultaneously stocking up on things to contend with the worse while hoping for the best as Federer takes to the court in The Garden later in September.
