July 2, 2008

Notre Dame, Ind. – Results from the University of Notre Dame football ticket lottery will be available on-line beginning Tuesday (July 8) – and, despite continuing high demand, the University’s alumni, friends and fans ended up with better chances of winning tickets in 2008 than they did in either of the last two record-setting seasons of 2006 and 2007.

The athletic department ticket office projections indicate that alumni win rates will be significantly better in this year’s lottery than in `06 and `07 for both home and away games. Alumni who followed the University’s advice to apply for tickets to as many games as possible (four or more) of this year’s six home games, for the most part, will win tickets to one or more home games this season. That is in sharp contrast to 2006, when many alumni missed out entirely due to unprecedented demand. Senior alumni requests for their designated game, San Diego State on Sept. 6, continued to increase this year. As such, for only the second time in Notre Dame ticket lottery history, a special senior alumni lottery was required. However, due to lottery improvements, the vast majority of senior alumni will receive tickets to their game. In this lottery, preference was given to the most senior alumni; for example, tickets were assigned first to those who graduated 50 or more years ago, and then descending in years since graduation. Increased demand from the rapidly growing senior alumni population was anticipated in 2006 and the priority system was designed at that time.

For a second straight year, separate lotteries also were held for members of giving societies and the Monogram Club.

Alumni ticket requests in the past few years have been exceedingly high and continue to be for 2008, based on these examples:

• More than $4.5 million will be refunded this year to unsuccessful lottery participants (the fourth-highest total in history). The ticket office will begin to mail those refunds the week of July 14.

• Three ’08 home games rank in the all-time top 25 for ticket requests – Michigan, Stanford and Purdue.

• The Nov. 15. Notre Dame-Navy game in Baltimore qualified as the fourth most-requested road game in Irish ticket history.

This year’s home opener with San Diego State will mark the 200th consecutive home game sold out in Notre Dame Stadium. With six sellouts for the 2008 season, the streak would be extended to 205 consecutive home contest sellouts by the end of ’08. The current streak of 199 straight sellouts began with the 1974 home opener against Purdue. Since the ’73 Air Force final regular-season home game was not a sellout (the game was switched to Thanksgiving Day for television and was played without students on campus), the current streak includes sellouts in 247 of the last 248 games dating to 1964 (the last previous non-sellout was the Oct. 24, 1964, game versus Stanford).

Notre Dame alumni, undergraduate parents and benefactors who make an annual minimum contribution to the University ($200 gift made the prior calendar year) are eligible to participate in an individual game lottery for both home and away contests. In excess of 30,000 tickets per game are available for each home contest for contributing alumni. Any time the number of applications exceeds the supply, a lottery is held.

The Notre Dame ticket office currently is finalizing the ’08 lottery and preparing refund checks. Lottery results will be available beginning July 8 on-line at www.und.com/tickets or by calling 574-631-7356 Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EDT.

The continuing high demand for Notre Dame football tickets historically leads to the unauthorized resale of tickets for profit and ticket fraud. The University remains committed to actively monitoring and enforcing its ticket resale policy in an effort to curb resale and fraud. Nearly 9,000 tickets have been suspended or revoked since 2002. Suspected resale violation or ticket fraud information can be sent to seller1@nd.edu.

Notre Dame recognizes that alumni, faculty/staff members and season-ticket holders may not be able to use all of the football tickets they have been assigned for a particular game, and may also have need for more tickets on other occasions. The University provides a ticket consignment service for those seeking to buy and sell tickets at face value within the Notre Dame family on the Web at http://alumni.nd.edu/football or by phone at 574-631-4434.