Notre Dame: Season-ticket holders on outside looking in
Notre Dame is prepared to welcome in an extremely limited number of fans for the pending 2020 college football season, but it won’t be season-ticket holders.
Following a document leak Sunday, Notre Dame officials on Monday began formally notifying season- and suite-ticket holders via email that they would not be allowed into Notre Dame Stadium in a season set to kick off at home against Duke in just 12 days.
All Fighting Irish students, who were temporarily removed from campus less than two weeks ago following a dramatic spike in positive COVID-19 tests less than two weeks ago, will have access to tickets for the six-game home schedule, which also includes subsequent games against South Florida, Florida State, Louisville and Clemson. Per two sources, the plan would not include the Syracuse game as the semester would be complete.
Students are expected to comprise approximately 75% of Notre Dame Stadium’s truncated capacity in the range of 15,000-20,000; Notre Dame faculty and staff will have access to a lottery-based system for a chance to purchase at most two tickets to a game. It is expected that ND-issued IDs will be required for entrance into games, and the school is ending the fall semester prior to Thanksgiving.
Notre Dame players’ families also will be allotted limited tickets.
Lastly, no more than a couple hundred tickets will be allotted to Notre Dame’s six visiting teams for players’ families and necessary personnel, in keeping with ACC protocols and similar to those being enacted as well in the Southeastern Conference. The SEC has indicated it will allow no more than 500 tickets to be issued to a visiting team and has widely revealed stadium capacities at no more than 25%.
In a May video call with reporters, Fighting Irish Athletics Director Jack Swarbrick indicated hopes for potentially 45,000 fans in the stadium this season and also noted that the school has deliberately maintained a season-ticket volume not to exceed 50% of the venue’s capacity or roughly 39,000.
Whatever number of season tickets Notre Dame sold in advance of this season, its staff will be asking those season-ticket buyers to either donate that cost to the Student Emergency Relief Fund, which has been vastly more active than usual for the school since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year forced the campus to shutter its spring semester mid-term and cancel its first-session summer school. Notre Dame will issue a ticket refund to those fans who request one and outlined steps for the refund process in the document.
On the field during preseason camp this month, Notre Dame largely has avoided any widespread outbreaks amongst its football team, as well as other athletics teams. Brian Kelly’s Fighting Irish football team paused briefly in mid-August after a round of tests and subsequently conducted back-to-back days of additional testing before they resumed their scheduled work on Aug. 22.
NOTRE DAME ANNOUNCES GAME DAY POLICIES FOR THE 2020 FOOTBALL SEASON