Changes to Student Ticket Lottery
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 2, 2010) – The Calipari Era did several things to Kentucky Basketball including seeing the program get its 2000th win, having 5 first round NBA draft selections and seeing record number of UK students at Memorial Coliseum on Monday nights for student ticket lotteries for men’s basketball tickets. In response to the massive crowds that attended last year’s student ticket lotteries, UK Athletics, the Dean of Students Office and UK Student Government are pleased to announce changes to the ticket lottery process.
This year, a hybrid online and in person lottery system is being launched where students will register online during a three-day window the week before the physical ticket lottery. Students must set up their “My UK Student Account” through UK Athletics in order to register during the online windows. The student ticket account site is available here. Please note that every student has an account; your account ID is your student ID number, starting with a 9. An email was sent in mid-October to students with their account ID and password. Do NOT set up a new account; new accounts will not be eligible for the student lotteries. For questions or difficulty with your account, contact the UK Ticket Office at (800) 928-2287 or via email.
Then, from the students who registered during the window, notifications will be sent to those who won slots to attend the physical lottery, thus every student who is notified that they should attend the lottery will receive tickets.
Lotteries will still be held at 9 p.m. on Monday nights in Memorial Coliseum and will be conducted similarly to previous years’ lotteries. Students will be given lottery numbers upon arrival, so students who want to sit together should enter together (maximum of 10 per group). Numbers will be called in lots of 100 to purchase tickets. When your lot is called, students will be directed to the ticket office to purchase tickets.
Complete instructions on the new lottery process are available here and it is vital that students review the instructions in their entirety prior to the first registration window opening on Nov. 8.
The Nov. 8 registration window and following lottery on Nov. 15 will be for men’s basketball home games versus Boston University, Indiana University, Mississippi Valley State University and Winthrop University. Subsequent registration windows are Nov. 29 with lottery on Dec. 6, Jan. 18 with lottery on Jan. 24 and Feb. 7 with lottery on Feb. 14.
“After the overwhelming amount of students at last year’s lotteries, we did extensive research about student ticket distribution among our benchmark and peer institutions,” Ryan Smith, student government president, said. “We believe that this new method will be beneficial to both students and staff who work with ticket distribution.
Students will be notified by email prior to the physical lottery to let them know if they have or have not received a slot in the lottery. This will cut down on hours of wait time for students who ultimately don’t end up with any tickets,” Smith continued. “Also, tickets will also now be linked to a student’s WildCard ID, which will allow students to replace tickets that they may have lost, something that was not available to students before.
We at Student Government are very excited about the changes to the student ticket lottery and appreciate all the efforts by UK Athletics and the Dean of Students Office to make tickets accessible for as many students as possible.”
UK’s men’s basketball team kicks off the season at 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 12, against East Tennessee State University in Rupp Arena while UK Hoops, the women’s basketball team, face the Morehead State Eagles at 11 a.m. that day in Memorial Coliseum.