A couple weeks ago I read a little a piece in this newsletter that concerned Aaron Judge's home runs. The prices of Yankees seats were going up tremendously, partly because of the chance of catching the record breaking ball that could sell for between $500,000 and $5 million. However, if someone was going to the game just for the chance of catching the ball, it would be an irrational decision.
The probability of choosing the right seat at the right game and then actually catching the ball is so low that the expected value from just the monetary costs and benefit is non existent. People might have overestimated their chance of catching the game ball (similar to how people might overestimate their ability to affect an election) and bought a ticket based on this. But, I think the real reason that people bought these Yankee tickets was because of the utility of going to the game and the expected utility of even seeing the record breaking homer exceed the cost of the ticket. So in the expression pB - C + D, D essentially outweighs C, as pB is tiny.
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