Have your say in the world’s first global Monopoly!

Monopoly fever goes global as cities around the planet battle to earn their place on the first-ever Worldwide Monopoly game board.

Global games giant Parker Brothers is launching a worldwide vote to find the 22 greatest cities in the world to be included on the new MONOPOLY Here & Now: The World Edition game board.

Beginning 22 January 2008 at midnight GMT/Universal Time, MONOPOLY fans around the world can visit www.monopoly.com to cast their online votes to help create the first-ever worldwide edition of the game. Voters are invited to cast their ballots for ten great cities each day of the vote, which will be open until 28 February 2008. The city that receives the most votes will be placed on the highest rent property. To facilitate voting for MONOPOLY fans worldwide, the website is available in more than 30 languages.

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. However, two spaces on the board will be reserved for cities that are nominated through a wild card vote. Any city in the world can be nominated for these property spaces.

For more than 70 years the official MONOPOLY board has represented elite locations in individual cities. However, recently Parker Brothers 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 France, Paris never made it onto game board. In the United States, powerhouse-city Dallas landed in the low-rent district. In Australia, fans logged more than 17 million votes. And in the UK, more votes were cast during the UK online vote than were cast in local elections taking place at the same time.

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