June 29, 2006

How much interest is there in University of Notre Dame football games for 2006?

There’s enough that the Sept. 9 Notre Dame-Penn State game and the Sept. 16 Notre Dame-Michigan game qualify as the two highest-requested games in the history of Notre Dame’s ticket lottery.

There’s enough that four ’06 home games rank in the all-time top 10 for requests — and all seven games rank in the top 30.

There’s enough that the Nov. 25 Notre Dame-USC game in Los Angeles qualified as the most-requested road game in Irish ticket history.

And there’s enough that the Notre Dame ticket office expects to mail refunds worth more than a record $11.7 million (compared to refunds of $5.2 million a year ago) to unsuccessful lottery participants in the University’s ticket distribution for contributing alumni, monogram winners, undergraduate parents and benefactors. There was a 37 percent increase in applications submitted to the ’06 lottery compared to a year ago.

Notre Dame alumni making an annual contribution of $100 or more to the University are eligible to apply for two tickets to as many home and away football games as they choose. 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 – and lotteries were required for all seven 2006 home games (meaning all seven home games automatically reached sellout status).

Demand was highest for the Sept. 9 home game vs. Penn State (66,670 tickets requested) and the Sept. 16 home game vs. Michigan (61,631), making those games the two highest-demanded home games in the history of Notre Dame Stadium. The previous all-time high was 59,368 requests for the 2001 home game against West Virginia. The high in 2005 was 54,211 for the Notre Dame-USC game at Notre Dame Stadium.

“The good news here is that the Irish are coming off a successful first year under Charlie Weis, and there is considerable excitement about the coming season,” said Notre Dame director of ticket operations Josh Berlo.

“The bad news for some alumni is that the resulting unprecedented demand for tickets will hurt their chances of winning in the ticket lottery.”

Other high-demand home games in ’06 are contests against North Carolina (54,838 requests for sixth all-time), UCLA (51,933 for 10th all-time), Stanford (50,491 for 13th all-time) and Purdue (47,655 for 17th all-time).

The high demand for road games came for the regular-season finale at USC (an all-time record 33,251 requests). Notre Dame receives 15,000 tickets as the visiting team in that contest.

The Notre Dame ticket office currently is finalizing the lottery and in the process of preparing lottery results and refund checks. Lottery results will be available beginning Wednesday, July 12, via www.und.com or by calling 574-631-7356 Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EDT.

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The University of Notre Dame recognizes that alumni, faculty/staff members and season-ticket holders may not be able to use all of the football tickets that they have been assigned for a particular game. In addition, the University recognizes that every weekend there are alumni, faculty/staff members and others that are in search of football tickets on a particular home football weekend.

For more information, click here or call 574-631-4434.