BATON ROUGE - LSU announced in a tweet from its football squad Tuesday afternoon, it will issue refunds for LSU-McNeese State football tickets purchased through the LSU Athletic Ticket Office.

The team's first game this season ended just five minutes into the first quarter when lightning was detected near the stadium. Bolts continued until the decision was made to cancel the game shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday. LSU said it was the first time a game was canceled since 1918 when World War I forced the school to cancel the entire season.

"Since this is a nearly unprecedented situation, we have had to thoroughly explore our options in addressing the matter of ticket refunds," Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Joe Alleva said. "In the end, we believe that issuing the refund is quite simply the right thing to do in this case. We have a plan in place that fairly reimburses fans who purchased tickets through our ticket office."

Fans who purchased a ticket for the LSU-McNeese State football game through the LSU Athletic Ticket Office will receive a full refund of the single-game ticket price. Refunds will apply to all LSU football season ticket-holders, including student season-ticket holders and ticket-holders who purchased a single-game ticket, a group ticket, or a ticket as part of a package through the LSU Athletic Ticket Office, LSUtix.net or the LSU Ticket Marketplace site.

Fans who purchased tickets using a credit card will have the refund issued to the credit card account by September 30. Fans who purchased by any other payments will receive a refund check in the mail by October 15 with the exception of individual game cash purchasers, who will have until 5 p.m. on September 30 to contact the ticket office about refund information. The ticket office phone number is (225) 578-2184.

Tickets purchased through McNeese should contact McNeese Athletics Department directly.

Fans who purchased tickets through non-authorized parties should contact the seller, LSU said.

"It's obviously an unfortunate situation since we had over 100,000 fans in Tiger Stadium for the start of game, and the atmosphere throughout the campus was electric," Alleva said. "Our fans again demonstrated why they are the best in the nation, and we appreciate their patience as we administer this process."

LSU did not release how much the refunds would cost the athletic department.

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