For Duke students, getting tickets to the ACC Tournament is like winning the lottery.
Literally.
The Duke Athletic Ticket Office held a lottery to raffle off available student tickets Jan. 21. Lottery winners were allowed to only purchase one ACC ticket book per person. The $363 package allows the holder access to all ACC Tournament games in Greensboro Coliseum March 9-12.
Fortunately for Duke students, all those who entered the lottery were awarded tickets to the sold-out venue.
ACC Tournament tickets have not been sold to the general public in 40 years. Instead, the ACC distributes an allotment of tickets to each of the 12 schools in the conference. Each individual school is responsible for privately distributing them between their own students, staff, season ticket holders and alumni.
Not surprisingly, Duke has no problem selling out its allotment each year.
It is not only in perennial powerhouses that interest level is high. Even ACC newcomer Boston College-playing its first tournament game Friday and located more than 750 miles from Greensboro-sold out its allotment of tickets by January.
"We have not had a problem selling our allotment," said Jim O'Neill, Boston College's associate athletic director of ticket operations. "Things have gone very well. Like our regular season games, there's been a lot of interest in there for tickets for the ACC Tournament."
Boston College, however, was only allotted one-third of the tickets given to the nine members who made up the conference before expansion two years ago. The reduced ticket share for this year was part of the agreement made when the Eagles joined the ACC.
Miami and Virginia Tech each got one-third of the allotment of the nine original members last year in their first season in the ACC. This year both schools will receive two-thirds of the regular allotment, and will get the full allotment next year. Boston College will follow the same pattern in the next two seasons.
Like students at Duke, Boston College students did not come out in droves to look for tickets.
"Well, they could have made an inquiry at the box office and we would have tried to help them," O'Neill said. "But this is during the week of our spring break so there really wasn't any interest on the part of our student body."
Although tickets are as always in high demand at each ACC school, the further spread of the total allotment caused by the expansion will be somewhat offset by a return to the 23,500-seat Greensboro Coliseum this year. Last season, the ticket crunch was aggravated by the ACC holding the event in the 20,000-seat MCI Center, since renamed the Verizon Center.
All ACC programs, however, will have to sacrifice as the three expansion teams progress to a full allotment status. But conference programs agree that too much interest is not a bad problem to have.
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