If misery loves company, so do sports fans. Dr. Leon Mann documented this several years ago when, as a Harvard professor, he studied the long overnight queues for tickets to ball games in his native Australia.
"Outside the stadium something of a carnival atmosphere prevails," he wrote in The American Journal of Sociology. "The devotees sing, sip warm drinks, play cards and huddle together."
Like the teams they had come to watch, the fans in line took timeouts. Some worked in shifts, with certain members leaving to take naps or eat meals, while others saved their places in line. Some staked claims in line with items of personal property such as sleeping bags and folding chairs. "During the early hours of waiting," Dr. Mann noted, "the queues often consisted of one part people to two parts inanimate objects.