The world order threatens to be redefined this week with Montreal poised to capture bitterly contested territory thanks to an online poll of board game fans.
Bloggers, talk-show hosts and business leaders are calling Montrealers to the ramparts in the hopes of securing a prime spot in a new edition of Monopoly.
“The benefits for the city will be enormous,” said the head of Montreal’s board of trade, Isabelle Hudon.
Montreal was leading Istanbul and 66 other cities in the most recently published results, leaving such backwater towns as London, New York and Moscow in the dust.
The online poll, hosted by toy-making giant Hasbro Inc., pits cities across the globe for the naming rights to 20 squares on the upcoming “Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition.”
Voting ends Thursday, when the city with the most votes will take the place of Boardwalk as the most coveted bit of real estate on the board. Second place gets Park Place.
The Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal has gone so far as to create a web portal to facilitate voting.
The mayor of Quebec City even pitched in with a commercial calling on denizens to set aside their historic enmity for Montreal and cast a vote for the city.
For Hudon, the campaign for a spot on the Monopoly board is clearly more than just a game.
“In recent years, 200 million people have played Monopoly,” she said. “That’s enormous. We couldn’t afford an advertising campaign that would have that kind of scope.”
Hasbro says it has averaged some 10,000 votes a day since the competition began in January.
If Montreal and Istanbul maintain their one-two ranking it would leave two cities 7,700 kilometres apart separated by nothing more than a $75 Luxury Tax. That irks some purists.
“It doesn’t make sense to have Istanbul next to Montreal on a Monopoly board,” said Jules Vautour, the manager at a local board-game store. “They’ll have to rearrange it.”
Results of the online vote will be revealed in August, while the Monopoly world edition hits stores in September.
