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Athletics will redo lottery

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Also by Matthew Dolbey:

by Matthew Dolbey

Friday, October 29, 2004

As of Monday, University of Wisconsin students will finally know if they have the winning numbers to the most-talked-about lottery on campus: the raffle to see who will receive season tickets for men’s basketball.

The UW Athletics Department said they will sell 2,100 season tickets for men’s basketball instead of distributing a proposed 1,500 season vouchers along with 2,250 complimentary four-game packages to students left out of the full-schedule tickets. The department will redo the lottery today and notify students receiving tickets Monday.

The decision to distribute the tickets this way is a result of an online survey taken earlier this week by UW students who applied to sit in the student section. A UW Athletics release shows 52.63 percent of the 3,082 voters wanted to get the whole season or nothing, while the remaining 47.37 percent called for a share of season tickets or getting the free four-game packages.

“[This] makes it the best [decision]. That’s what they wanted,” Steve Malchow, associate athletic director, said. “The whole idea was … meeting our customers’ needs and wants.”

The online survey and subsequent plan of action is a result of a computer glitch that left out 625 of the more than 3,700 students applying for men’s basketball season tickets.

Everyone who applied for basketball tickets was supposed to be entered into a lottery to see who would receive the 2,100 seats open to students. A student was entered into the raffle numerous times based on year in school and how many times he or she has bought basketball tickets before.

Because of the technical mix-up, the Athletic Department held a town-hall meeting Monday to discuss concerns of students and ways to alleviate the situation.

Aside from fixing the lottery’s omissions, Malchow said all of the students receiving tickets will be notified at the same time via e-mail. Students receiving tickets before were notified incrementally, giving those informed earlier an unfair advantage to wait in line.

“We’re actually releasing the names in three ways,” Malchow said, adding students receiving tickets will also have their names posted at Gate A at the Kohl Center and at the Athletic Department’s website. “One thing we learned in this is using backup files.”

Malchow added the department is doing everything it can to prevent technical problems in the future.

UW junior Jeff Harding said he voted for the 2,100 season tickets, all-or-nothing alternative, calling it the “lesser of two evils.”

“I’d rather have a shot at going to all the games,” Harding said in an interview. Harding added that, ideally, all applicants would be able to get tickets and suggested more seats in the Kohl Center be dedicated to the student section.

Malchow did say he was a little surprised students turned down the chance to get into four games for free.

“The fact that students turned down free tickets was a bit surprising to some of us,” Malchow said. “That tells we have some really passionate fans.”

However, Harding did say he appreciated that students were able to add their input as to how they wanted their season tickets to be distributed, and noted it is a difficult task for the Athletic Department to please everyone.

“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Harding said. “It’s a fine line [the Athletic Department has to] walk.”

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Marc Bourgeois (October 29, 2004 @ 8:44am):

I can't believe this. I can't believe students would turn down a lottery in where those who do not win are still guaranteed to go to some games and the Athletic Department is giving away free tickets. I'm absolutely amazed that anyone would turn it down. In the other option the losers of the lottery would become the biggest winners, the ones that get to see basketball games for free.

Anonymous (October 29, 2004 @ 1:01pm):

As a student who was one of the 625 initially left out, I would have had to agree with you from the very start, but I dont think students neccesarily voted what is the most "fair" plan, but what will benefit them as an individual the most. If i had to guess, the people who voted against the free tix, were juniors and seniors who had a better chance at season tix to begin with, whereas the freshmen wanted the free tickets because they knew they would probably lose the lottery anyway. So i think its safer to say that students werent voting againts free tickets, they were voting for themseleves.......myself included.

Anonymous (October 29, 2004 @ 1:21pm):

I hope everyone that voted for the all or nothing gets no tickets and realized that they should have at least got 4 free games had they actually tought about what they were doing when they voted.