Here Comes Tijuanopóly Board Game

If the American version Monopoly, the classic board game, seems a bit blasé nowadays, you might want to give Tijuanopóly a try. The city south of the border has just announced that it will be marketing a board game by that name, a game that emulates Monopoly.

According to an article in Frontera, 5000 units of the game will be released under the auspices of Testa Marketing as a method of promoting Tijuana’s tourist attractions.

According to Cachu Manrique, director of the project, the game board will substitute the names of Tijuana’s streets for the ones found in the Parker Brothers’ classic. Think: Revolución for Boardwalk, Constitución for Park Place, etc.

Tijuana is not the first city to be memorialized in the board game known as “Monopolio,” as it is called in Latin American countries. Valencia, Granada, Madrid, Atlanta, New York, Las Vegas, and Paris have their own eponymous variants as well.

Local businesses will be able to buy advertising space on the board at a cost of $2000 to $15,000 — a bargain, according to Manrique, who says the average life span of the board game is 15 years. About 30 percent of the available advertising space has been sold.

The game will sell for about 350 pesos (around $30), although the retail price has not yet been decided upon; there is an interest in keeping the price as low as possible in order to garner wide distribution.