Athletics introduces lottery ticket system

Kris Mason
Contributing Writer

No longer will students have to gamble hours of their time on game day only to miss out on tickets to watch the men’s basketball team play at the Siegel Center.

VCU Athletics adopted a new ticketing policy that requires students to make an online ticket account through the VCU Athletics website so they can request tickets, print them out and show them at the gate, along with their VCU ID, to gain guaranteed admission.

Scott Day, VCU’s assistant ahtletic director for athletic communications, said the project was in the works for nearly a year and the effort was designed to better accomodate the student body.

“As an athletic department, we recognize how important our student body is to the atmosphere at the Siegel Center and want to provide everyone an equal chance to contribute to that atmosphere,” Day said in an email. “Over the past year, we have worked closely with the student government and Dr. Reuben Rodriguez’s group to come up with a more efficient way of providing each student an equal chance at men’s basketball tickets.”

This method differs from years past in that students will no longer have to wait in line for several hours leading up to tip-off. In previous years the student ticket policy was strictly a first come, first serve for the general student population. Security would let students enter until the allotted amount of 2,000 student seats had been filled. Only a student ID was required for entrance.

VCU’s 16-game home schedule has been broken down into six separate claiming periods throughout the season. Each claiming period consists of between one and four games to choose from. Beginning at 10 a.m. of each claiming day, students will be able to request tickets for the designated games. Tickets are emailed to students less than a week prior to games.

The potential down-side rests in the fact that students must attend games they receive tickets for in order to fill the Siegel Center.If a student misses three games after claiming tickets, they will be unable to request tickets for the remainder of the year.

Rowdy Rams members are able to claim tickets a day earlier than the rest of the student population. Every member is guaranteed entrance to every game if they request a ticket in the Rowdy Ram claim periods. However, if they don’t request tickets during the claim period, then their request will be put into the student lottery.

With this system, tickets will be automatically given out to students if ticket requests are not at full capacity. If ticket requests exceed the allotted amount, there will be a lottery run to determine which students win tickets.