Tickets for Tampa: Bolts players donate nearly $200k in tickets to support area nonprofits, personal causes

Well before the home opener is played each NHL season, Tampa Bay Lightning players have already committed to giving back.

Each season, Lightning players purchase tickets to home games before donating them to area nonprofits as a thank you for bettering the Tampa Bay area.

Thirteen different Tampa Bay players combined to donate $180,000 worth of ticket packages to home games during the 2025-26 season, the most in franchise history.

“It's really great,” Lightning Foundation and Community Events Director Sarah Costello said. “It's a fun challenge for us to have that many more tickets to give out to the community. We go in with kind of no expectation, and we just let the players, their generosity and what they're talking to their families about dictate how the program goes year over year. We’ve loved to see the growth.”

On media day at the start of each season, players are presented with a list of organizations to which they can donate tickets. Some players also bring ideas of their own, supporting causes they hold close to their hearts.

The Lightning Foundation has a list of 26 impact areas they strongly support, as well as area nonprofits they help annually through the Community Heroes program and other initiatives.

“We have relationships with nonprofits that do such a wide variety of positive things in this community, and then from there, we just play matchmaker,” she said of players and their ticket program picks. “It’s a mixture of them coming to us and us providing them with a list of suggestions.”

Players purchase tickets in bulk before the season through the Lightning Foundation, and the Foundation splits the tickets between the nonprofits each game. Every home game includes anywhere from 40 to 250 tickets allotted to the player ticket program.

Causes range from afterschool programs to the Special Olympics, mental health support, military families, first responders, the Humane Society and other initiatives.

Tampa Bay’s player ticket program invites those associated with area nonprofit organizations such as impacted families, employees and volunteers to home games, allowing them to meet and engage with the players after watching the game.

Each player hosts five postgame meet-and-greets over the course of the season.

“We want them to be able to invite families or clients who they're serving, but we also know how hard people in the nonprofit community work between their staff and volunteers. We want those people to have the opportunity to enjoy a game as well, because they're working with and supporting these populations every day. We leave it up to them between inviting client families and inviting volunteer and staff families, all of whom are deserving of recognition and deserving of an opportunity to attend a Lightning game. And usually, thanks to the generosity of the players, we have enough volume that it's enough for everybody between clients' families and volunteers and staff.”

At a time when society seems to have opened the conversation surrounding mental health, the Lightning player ticket program has seen more support for the same cause over recent years.

“Over the last several seasons, mental health has been one of the strongest supported player ticket program causes,” Costello said. “Over the last three to four seasons, we've had at least three players supporting mental health, either with their whole program or with a portion of their program. It just speaks to the work that these players want to do based on their personal experiences to help continue the conversation around mental health, continue to support mental health awareness.”

‘Totally driven by the players’

The Lightning player ticket program stands out in the NHL, and Costello said other organizations have noticed.

It all comes back to players who want to give back.

“I think most teams have at least one or maybe a few players with a branded ticket program,” she said. “But from what we've heard from our colleagues across the league, the program that we've been able to build in terms of the number of players that are involved is one of the highest in the league. We shared some anecdotal examples about this on a recent league call, and the feedback was overwhelmingly, ‘How do you do this? How do you get so many players involved?’ It’s a unique program because of the support that we've seen from the players.”

The ticket program has been in Tampa for several years, and it only continues to grow. Each season, Costello said participation seems to spread across the NHL roster even with new faces.

She credits that growth to the organization’s culture; one led by the veterans on the team as well as a younger generation seeking ways to give back early in their careers.

“I think it speaks to the veteran leadership that we have on the team that we now have newer guys joining the team or younger players getting involved right off the bat. It’s been great to see the way this program has grown so much over the last five years post-pandemic since we've had the ability to fill the building again,” she said. "It's been really great to see younger, newer players, along with those veterans, involved.”

Regardless of the final score after each home game, when those meet-and-greets through the player ticket program occur, the players are present.

And they are happy to be there.

“We're letting the players tell us what's important to them and then using that to support those causes. We're using these tickets to give back to organizations that they are telling us are important to them,” Costello said.

“It's totally driven by the players. This is something unique and special that the players are coming to us and committing to participate in at a significant financial contribution. It's really their thing. We’re just the vehicle.”

Note: This story is the first of a series highlighting Tampa Bay’s player ticket program, in which Lightning players donate tickets to those affiliated with area nonprofits each season through the Lightning Foundation as a way to recognize them for their contributions to the community.