A system and method for operating lottery-style or sweepstakes-style contests based on a bracket tournament involving multiple future events with winners of each event advancing to a next round and eventually a final competition with a winner thereof being the winner of the tournament or a fixed number of non-bracket events. The system and method involve distributing random tickets including all possible outcomes of a group of future events. In one version, all possible outcomes are distributed such that at least one contestant will hold a ticket with all winning outcomes.