Vote Queenstown and get NZ on the Board

Media Release
23 January 2008

Come on Kiwis – Vote Queenstown and get NZ on the Board

‘A vote For Queenstown is a vote for New Zealand’ as Monopoly fever goes global with cities around the planet vying for a square on the first-ever worldwide Monopoly board.

Global games giant Hasbro is launching a worldwide vote to find the 22 greatest cities in the world to be included on the first-ever Monopoly Here & Now: World Edition game board – and Queenstown, New Zealand is the only Kiwi region to make the list of 68 finalists.

But its immortalisation as part of the biggest selling board game worldwide depends on the number of Kiwis visiting www.monopoly.co.nz to vote for Queenstown from 23 January 2008. Voters can cast their ballot for up to ten cities each day of the vote, which will be open until 29 February 2008. The twenty cities that receive the most votes will be part of Monopoly history as the first cities selected to be on the World Edition game board with the top city being placed on the coveted highest rent property traditionally held by Mayfair.

Says Leigh Gibson, Product Manager Hasbro, “A vote for Queenstown is a vote for New Zealand. We may have lost the Rugby World Cup and the America’s Cup but this is a chance to mark New Zealand firmly on the world map alongside some of the world’s greatest cities like New York, Toyko and Paris.”

Hasbro estimates that over the next five years up to 100 million people could be trading Queenstown for London on the new Monopoly Here & Now: World Edition game board. More than 750 million people have played Monopoly since it was first introduced nearly 75 years ago, making it the world’s most popular board game.

Queenstown beat out other New Zealand cities as well as some of the top travel destinations in the world including San Francisco, Milan and Venice to become a finalist. Says Gibson, Queenstown was the clear choice for nomination as it is a place that all New Zealanders can be proud of with its adventurous outdoors attitude and clean, green image.

Hasbro NZ hopes that Kiwis from around the globe will vote in droves to ensure Queenstown secures Monopoly real estate. For those Kiwis who encourage friends and family to vote, there’s a trip to any city that has been nominated up for grabs. Expat Kiwis are also encouraged to cast a ballot and spread the word to go in the draw. (Visit www.monopoly.co.nz for more information on how to be in to win)

Two spaces on the board will be reserved for cities that are nominated through a wild card vote. Any region from any country in the world can be nominated for these property spaces, which means that Sydney or Paris have as equal chance of making it on the board as Taupo.

For more than 70 years the official Monopoly board has represented the most elite locations in individual cities. However, recently, Hasbro invited fans of the game to help update the board in their respective countries to reflect what the game board would look like if it were created today instead of in 1935. The votes resulted in the “Here & Now” versions of the game in each country – with often surprising results! In New Zealand, fans logged more than 230,000 votes. In France, Paris never made it onto the game board. In Australia, more than 17 million votes were recorded. And in the UK, more votes were cast during the UK online vote than were cast in the local elections, which took place simultaneously.

The cities voted onto the final game board will be announced in August 2008 when the new Monopoly Here & Now: World Edition will be available in stores.

ENDS

Editor’s Notes:
The 68 cities nominated for the global vote include the following:

Amsterdam
Athens
Barcelona
Beijing
Belgrade
Berlin
Bogota
Boston
Bratislava
Brussels
Bucharest
Budapest
Buenos Aires
Cairo
Cape Town
Caracas
Cardiff
Chicago
Copenhagen
Dubai
Dublin
Edinburgh
Frankfurt

Helsinki
Hong Kong
Istanbul
Jerusalem
Kiev
Kuala Lumpur
Las Vegas
Lisbon
Ljublijana
London
Los Angeles
Lyon
Madrid
Melbourne
Mexico City
Montreal
Moscow
Mumbai
Munich
New York
Oslo
Paris
Prague

Queenstown
Riga
Rio de Janeiro
Rome
Santiago
Seoul
Shanghai
Singapore City
Sofia
St. Petersburg
Stockholm
Sydney
Tallinn
Tokyo
Toronto
Vancouver
Vienna
Vilnius
Warsaw
Washington, D.C.
Zagreb
Zurich

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