University of Maryland Offers Free Tuition in Lottery to Boost Football Game Attendance
The struggling Terrapins football program is implementing a promotion to encourage students to stay for entire games.
The University of Maryland's football program is attempting to draw larger crowds by offering a chance to win a semester's worth of tuition to students who attend its games and remain until the end.
The Terrapins, currently 2-5 on the season and having recently fired head coach Mike Locksley, have experienced low attendance figures. Their average of 42,264 fans per home game ranks 15th out of 18 teams in the Big Ten Conference.
To incentivize attendance, students who claim tickets for Saturday's game against Illinois can scan a QR code displayed on the video board to enter a raffle. Five finalists will be brought to the field after the game concludes. One student will be randomly selected to receive the equivalent of one semester of in-state undergraduate tuition, estimated at $8,000, for the upcoming spring semester.
University officials stated that the promotion was conceived before the team's recent performance decline. "It is kind of a problem, I think, across the country, honestly, with college football," one representative said, referring to declining attendance. "It's a pretty long game and they have a lot of other things they can be doing."
The goal of the initiative is to increase student engagement and support for the football team throughout all four quarters of each game. "So we just want to make sure coming to SECU Stadium [and] supporting our football team for all four quarters is higher on their priority list, especially on Halloween," the representative added.
The Terrapins' season began with two wins against Hampton and UConn. However, they have not secured a victory since.
Their conference record has also suffered, with no Big Ten wins since a road game against Wisconsin in mid-September 2025.
