Move over Atlantic City. Pierre, SD just snagged the esteemed Boardwalk placement on the newest version of the MONOPOLY game, MONOPOLY HERE & NOW.
Hasbro, Inc., the maker of the Monopoly board game, conducted a public vote powered by BuzzFeed on VoteMonopoly.com to determine what communities throughout the U.S. would be featured in their MONOPOLY HERE & NOW U.S. Edition game. And today Hasbro announced Pierre got the most votes.
“I am so proud of our community,” said Pierre Mayor Laurie Gill. “We basically had seven days to initiate and execute a get out the vote effort. Pierre really stepped up to the plate, and knocked this one out of the park.”
In late February, the City of Pierre was informed of the MONOPOLY HERE & NOW promotion. It was a crowd-sourced competition to determine what twenty-two cities throughout the U.S. would be featured as property spaces on the MONOPOLY HERE & NOW U.S. Edition board. Sixty cities, pre-determined by Hasbro were in the running. Voting closed on March 4 and the city with the most online votes secured the highly coveted Boardwalk space.
Mayor Gill says that as soon as she heard about the opportunity, she was in it to win it.
“We partnered with local media, the school district, and several state government agencies to get the word out. We encouraged our community members to vote early and often, and they did!”
The results speak for themselves. Gill says when Pierre initiated its get out the vote effort, it was in 57th place. And in less than a week, Pierre skyrocketed to the number one spot.
That’s more votes than New York City, Los Angeles, or Chicago received.
The MONOPOLY HERE & NOW games will be available this fall and will feature iconic landmark tokens and new gameplay where players race round the board to visit as many locations as possible, collecting passport stamps along the way. Players will collect cash from visitor fees when opponents land on their locations and the first player to fill their passport wins.