Ben's Blog: Rio 2016 Working Out The Pricing Kinks At Women's Soccer

Olympic competition started Wednesday with a handful of women’s football matches, and Rio 2016 was not ready for prime time, reports Brant Feldman, an agent for several U.S. and Canadian athletes.

At the Arena Corinthians in São Paolo for the Canada-Australia match, Feldman says he tried to buy Olympic merchandise but didn’t know what the price was. Problem was, neither did the workers.

They look nice, but this Rio 2016 merchandise and concession stand had no pricing and were unable to make a sale.

“They have everything set up, and it looks all nice and everything, but they can’t sell it because they don’t have the prices,” Feldman said. “Can you imagine anywhere in the world of merchandising that they can’t tell you the price?”

A few minutes later, he encountered a beer stand with no posted prices and a language barrier with the attendant. So he couldn’t buy a beer, either.

Some good news from Feldman, who watched Canada win 2-0: The 48,234-seat Arena Corinthians appeared to be better than 80 percent full in photos. That contrasted starkly with a Sweden-South Africa match in Rio, which drew just a few thousand fans.