5 days 4 nights Feb 19-23 all expenses paid and $500 cash. Contest was for the monopoly millionaire multi state lottery. I'll be one if a couple hundred in the audience for the monopoly game show with a chance to be picked. Will be my first time in Vegas..pretty sure they are putting us up at the Rio...anything I need to know? See? Suggestions? Anyone else gonna be out there?
It was a multi state lottery game like mega million or powerball with a monopoly theme. Had three separate ways to win..match numbers, match a random code (only if top prize was hit), or collect properties and enter them online (this was like the mega or powerball number and picked at random)...
I won the collect properties aspect of the game. All winners get paid Vegas trip for 2 to be part of the monopoly millionaire game show which begins airing Feb 7.
the catch is the game started in October and was killed in mid December because of bad sales. The game was very complicated for the older population who typically play the lottery. Many failed to take advantage of all aspects of the game which greatly increased the odds of anyone who was paying attention.
I won the collect properties aspect of the game. All winners get paid Vegas trip for 2 to be part of the monopoly millionaire game show which begins airing Feb 7.
the catch is the game started in October and was killed in mid December because of bad sales. The game was very complicated for the older population who typically play the lottery. Many failed to take advantage of all aspects of the game which greatly increased the odds of anyone who was paying attention.
Congrats
I saw the game ended in Pa. is it still going in the other 13 States? and do you know if this will be only show? I saw in Pa. they gave away 1,000,000 and change to all winners being nobody matched 5 and the property numbers nationwided. I imagined the other 24 million was spread out to other States playing as they did in Pa?
Good Luck..... $5 a ticket was alot plus the fact matching 5 numbers paid $100,000 with Monopoly where if you played Cash 5 and matched 5 you won $125,000! I played once and matched the property number and won $5 now if it was the last draw it would've paid, $147. You know what their next scheme I mean game is.... Match 2
Good Luck..... $5 a ticket was alot plus the fact matching 5 numbers paid $100,000 with Monopoly where if you played Cash 5 and matched 5 you won $125,000! I played once and matched the property number and won $5 now if it was the last draw it would've paid, $147. You know what their next scheme I mean game is.... Match 2
congrats!!
I actually just got back from popping my vegas cherry...
a couple of things for a first timer... the Rio is off the strip, so I never made it over there...
the strip is much bigger than you think. everything seems close but nothing is... even two casino's down can be a trip... you can waste so much time walking... cab fares add up, everytime you use a card to pay for the cab theres an extra fee, i ended up having a cash stack set aside just for cab fares..
i knew vegas would be an expensive city, but even then it was far more expensive than I would have thought...
Everyone will have food recommendations... anyone who recommends "the steakhouse" discontinue their advice on any and everything ... worst place I ever been... mesa grill, i believe in ceasars best place I've ever eaten... i got the lamb, wife steak, both the best.
I know it will sound like a waste of time in vegas, but I did this fly over the grand canyon thing and it was the most amazing thing I've ever experienced. I did the cheaper version like $130 a person, they pick you up at your hotel, drive you out to this airport and you jump in a small plane and fly over the canyon with an audio tour for about an hour. entire thing last 5 hours, hotel to hotel... I will do it again next time and spring for the more expensive helicopter tour, it was that awesome...
oh, it was fucking cold at night, and I had very few warm clothes...
if you like to club, you need to get hooked up with a promoter. sure a lot of people here have that for you if you want that...
as far as shows, i'd like to do more.. i did a magic one ( used tix4tonight ) i forget the name it was okay.. worth the $30 i'd suppose... did blue man, also fun... bodies muesum was boring.. even my wife who works in the health care thought it was...
zipling down freemont was awesome! do it at night, but dress warm, it gets cold on that wait... but that was fun.
ohhh.. if your going with your girl and she likes animals do the siegfried and roy secret garden, the VIP is well worth it. it's a dolphin and tiger habitat, get to behind the scenes tour which is much cooler than it sounds.
my fav casinos were venetian (best sports book IMO) and cosmo ( pretty girls everywhere )... Oh, in the back of cosmo, there's a little coffee shop.. they have an italian breakfast sandwich, i can't even put in words how good it was... i will eat it every day next time i'm back... over easy egg on a sandwhich, its perfect....
that's everything that comes to mind...
I actually just got back from popping my vegas cherry...
a couple of things for a first timer... the Rio is off the strip, so I never made it over there...
the strip is much bigger than you think. everything seems close but nothing is... even two casino's down can be a trip... you can waste so much time walking... cab fares add up, everytime you use a card to pay for the cab theres an extra fee, i ended up having a cash stack set aside just for cab fares..
i knew vegas would be an expensive city, but even then it was far more expensive than I would have thought...
Everyone will have food recommendations... anyone who recommends "the steakhouse" discontinue their advice on any and everything ... worst place I ever been... mesa grill, i believe in ceasars best place I've ever eaten... i got the lamb, wife steak, both the best.
I know it will sound like a waste of time in vegas, but I did this fly over the grand canyon thing and it was the most amazing thing I've ever experienced. I did the cheaper version like $130 a person, they pick you up at your hotel, drive you out to this airport and you jump in a small plane and fly over the canyon with an audio tour for about an hour. entire thing last 5 hours, hotel to hotel... I will do it again next time and spring for the more expensive helicopter tour, it was that awesome...
oh, it was fucking cold at night, and I had very few warm clothes...
if you like to club, you need to get hooked up with a promoter. sure a lot of people here have that for you if you want that...
as far as shows, i'd like to do more.. i did a magic one ( used tix4tonight ) i forget the name it was okay.. worth the $30 i'd suppose... did blue man, also fun... bodies muesum was boring.. even my wife who works in the health care thought it was...
zipling down freemont was awesome! do it at night, but dress warm, it gets cold on that wait... but that was fun.
ohhh.. if your going with your girl and she likes animals do the siegfried and roy secret garden, the VIP is well worth it. it's a dolphin and tiger habitat, get to behind the scenes tour which is much cooler than it sounds.
my fav casinos were venetian (best sports book IMO) and cosmo ( pretty girls everywhere )... Oh, in the back of cosmo, there's a little coffee shop.. they have an italian breakfast sandwich, i can't even put in words how good it was... i will eat it every day next time i'm back... over easy egg on a sandwhich, its perfect....
that's everything that comes to mind...
game is "suspended" everywhere. Supposedly they are trying to tweak it but I think its toxic at this point for the lottery. Bringing it back from the dead with new rules would make it even more confusing.
the payouts on the final draw were nuts. The same thing happened with the super six in pa years ago. Not to this magnitude but when they kill these jackpot games with money in the kitty they are must plays
here is a lengthy overview of how this is all going down... can someone hook me up with an RX shirt?
Two out-of-state lottery winners who won five-day Las Vegas vacations added to their haul here Sunday with $1 million each playing the “Monopoly Millionaires’ Club” TV game show being filmed at the Rio. “Mike & Molly” star and comedian Billy Gardell hosts the tapings.
It took four weeks to construct the 48,000-square-foot studio facility in the east parking area of the Rio. It is now the largest TV studio setup in Nevada.
Each filmed “Monopoly” game show has an audience of 375 people, all of whom are here after winning five-day Las Vegas trips at Planet Hollywood as a prize from playing the Monopoly lottery terminal game in 23 states. They get to attend two tapings, and, in a random drawing, five people become players.
They play one at a time with a first-chance win at $100,000. In the final round, they become the human game pieces: a boot, cat, dog, wheelbarrow and battleship. At Saturday’s first taping, one person nearly won $1 million, needing a total of five to come up on two dices. One came up 4, and the other landed on its side showing a 5 and a 1, but it unfortunately toppled over and came up 5.
The human pieces play on the largest LED Monopoly board ever built for television anywhere in the world. The multimillion-dollar prizes make it the richest new game show ever produced for television. Monopoly, which itself turns 80 in March, is certain to get a whole new lease on life with the massive TV production.
“Monopoly” airs starting Feb. 7, but it won’t be shown on regular commercial television in Las Vegas or Nevada due to gaming rules because our Silver State doesn’t have a state lottery. However, the Game Show Network is the exclusive cable partner, so you can catch all the excitement there (Channel 344 Cox Cable).
The set is a behemoth with 10 cameras shooting all the action, including remote-controlled ones circling on an overhead ceiling track. The floor video display with the Monopoly board measures 900 feet with 62,220,800 LED lights. They require more than 8,500 control channels and another 473,976 individual LEDs on more than a half-mile of tape.
For the initial games before the Monopoly board lights up for the heart-pumping finale each time, there are 25 HD TV sets, plus video screens with another 3,134,976 LEDs. It truly is a monster.
Steve Saferin, president and chief creative officer of Scientific Games Property, the game show creator, told me: “We are a large, multifaceted gaming company. We are the largest printer of scratch-off lottery tickets in the world. We are now the second-largest slot machine manufacturer and also the largest table gaming company.
“We started this in the summer of 2013. The organization that runs Power Ball put out a request for proposals for a new national lottery game and a game show to go with it. We’d been giving this some thought for some time, so we began to put this together. We had patents on a game called ‘The Millionaires Club,’ and we decided we would brand it with Monopoly because we had a Monopoly lottery license. So we submitted that bid I think in September 2013. We found out we won in April, and here we are in January of 2015 and we’re on the air with a weekly one-hour production.
Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.com
On the TV set of "Monopoly Millionaires' Club" hosted by Billy Gardell on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, at the Rio.
Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.com
On the TV set of "Monopoly Millionaires' Club" hosted by Billy Gardell on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, at the Rio.
Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.com
On the TV set of "Monopoly Millionaires' Club" hosted by Billy Gardell on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, at the Rio.
“We picked Las Vegas to shoot the show because all of the audience — the game players — are flown in from the various lottery states. They have all won the attractive lottery prize of a week’s vacation in Las Vegas. The contestants are selected from the audience.”
The crew filmed six shows over the weekend with host Billy Gardell, his first TV-hosting gig. We’ll have our full interview with Billy on Tuesday. Then there’s a break until the end of February when they will film another six shows.
“I think that’s how the schedule will run. We’ll produce six at a time, three a day,” added Steve. “We’re supposedly on air at least through August 2016. As long as we stay on the air, we’ll be filming here.”
I asked him to describe the show and explain why it won’t be seen on regular Las Vegas television except for the Game Show Network: “The reason it’s not on in Las Vegas is because you cannot have lottery promotion, marketing and advertising on a television station who’s transmitter isn’t a state that doesn’t have a lottery. Otherwise, this could have been a network program.
“So the networks would have had blackout affiliates in markets, and without seeing the show, they weren’t willing to do that. That doesn’t mean it might not be a network show because this show has its qualities.
“It is a non-skilled game show. In this game that just ended a little while ago, a woman came within a whisker of winning $1 million. She needed to roll a 5, and she rolled a 4 and the other die was tilted on the side. You could see the 1 and the 5, and it just fell to the 5, so she won $200,000 instead.
“We estimate that we’ll give away $1 million six times a year. That’s about as many times as it’s been given away in the history of television. I mean we think we will. We don’t know for sure because it conceivably could be every game — or never.
“Each mini-game on the TV show has a prize of $100,000; a top prize, but you can win other amounts, or you can go bust. It’s just a lot like the real game. We use Monopoly as the iconography. We have a game Ride the Rails, we have a game Electric Company, so it’s based on actual Monopoly iconography.
“We have Monopoly slot machines in our portfolios. We also have a Monopoly lottery license, the most popular third party in the lottery business. We probably printed close to $7 billion of Monopoly scratch tickets. The U.S. lottery business is annually about $65 billion, and almost 60 percent of that is scratch-off.
“We have 80 to 130 people involved. It’s a very big production, and it’s a big set. Billy Gardell is the host. He’s been great. Our executive producer is Scott St. John, who did ‘Deal or No Deal’ and ‘America’s Got Talent’ for NBC, ‘Win, Lose or Draw’ for Disney and now currently ‘Celebrity Name Game’ in syndication. He really knows this business.”
Kevin Belinkoff of “Scrabble Showdown” and “The Newlywed Game” is the other executive producer. Models Paige Collings and Korrina Rico are the two Monopoly Maidens.
Monopoly, which is available in 111 countries and 43 languages, has sold 275 million games around the world. Since its creation in 1935, more than 1 billion people have played the game. I once filmed San Francisco jeweler Sidney Mobell for “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” when he made the most expensive version — $2 million — with a 23-carat gold board and diamond-studded dice.
I watched as the audience was divided into five sections. Each of the five selected players is seated on a throne surrounded by his or her audience section. If they strike it rich, 50 percent of the winnings is divided among the section, and the player keeps 50 percent.
To reach the final round, they play the starter $100,000 round games, and each contestant can choose to keep their winnings or risk losing it all when they attempt to land on “Go” to win the $1 million prize. In the preliminary round, I watched a New York male contestant who had to fill a hotel room chart based on the number of guests arriving in different limousines without exceeding the accommodation limits on the three floors. It’s a lot tougher than it sounds.
The other challenges include a similar Parking Garage challenge, a Ride the Rails challenge and brain teasers at the 10 Community Chests, the Electric Company spaces, which light up bulbs for more cash prizes, a block party and opening five of six locks on the Monopoly bank correctly.
In every episode, audience members are featured on their hometown TV affiliate during a mini-game portion of the show, which is hosted by Daytime Emmy Award-winning game show host Todd Newton.
Our thanks to Tom Donoghue for his behind-the-scenes photos and his aerial shots of the “Monopoly Millionaire’s Club” studio. Don’t forget to check back Tuesday for our chat with Billy.
This may be the most ambitious TV game show ever, and it’s thoroughly entertaining. It’s one of the largest TV projects ever brought to Las Vegas, and judging from the audience enthusiasm when the confetti cannons and balloons exploded with the first two $1 million winners, it’s here for a long run.
Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past 15 years giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.
Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leac
Two out-of-state lottery winners who won five-day Las Vegas vacations added to their haul here Sunday with $1 million each playing the “Monopoly Millionaires’ Club” TV game show being filmed at the Rio. “Mike & Molly” star and comedian Billy Gardell hosts the tapings.
It took four weeks to construct the 48,000-square-foot studio facility in the east parking area of the Rio. It is now the largest TV studio setup in Nevada.
Each filmed “Monopoly” game show has an audience of 375 people, all of whom are here after winning five-day Las Vegas trips at Planet Hollywood as a prize from playing the Monopoly lottery terminal game in 23 states. They get to attend two tapings, and, in a random drawing, five people become players.
They play one at a time with a first-chance win at $100,000. In the final round, they become the human game pieces: a boot, cat, dog, wheelbarrow and battleship. At Saturday’s first taping, one person nearly won $1 million, needing a total of five to come up on two dices. One came up 4, and the other landed on its side showing a 5 and a 1, but it unfortunately toppled over and came up 5.
The human pieces play on the largest LED Monopoly board ever built for television anywhere in the world. The multimillion-dollar prizes make it the richest new game show ever produced for television. Monopoly, which itself turns 80 in March, is certain to get a whole new lease on life with the massive TV production.
“Monopoly” airs starting Feb. 7, but it won’t be shown on regular commercial television in Las Vegas or Nevada due to gaming rules because our Silver State doesn’t have a state lottery. However, the Game Show Network is the exclusive cable partner, so you can catch all the excitement there (Channel 344 Cox Cable).
The set is a behemoth with 10 cameras shooting all the action, including remote-controlled ones circling on an overhead ceiling track. The floor video display with the Monopoly board measures 900 feet with 62,220,800 LED lights. They require more than 8,500 control channels and another 473,976 individual LEDs on more than a half-mile of tape.
For the initial games before the Monopoly board lights up for the heart-pumping finale each time, there are 25 HD TV sets, plus video screens with another 3,134,976 LEDs. It truly is a monster.
Steve Saferin, president and chief creative officer of Scientific Games Property, the game show creator, told me: “We are a large, multifaceted gaming company. We are the largest printer of scratch-off lottery tickets in the world. We are now the second-largest slot machine manufacturer and also the largest table gaming company.
“We started this in the summer of 2013. The organization that runs Power Ball put out a request for proposals for a new national lottery game and a game show to go with it. We’d been giving this some thought for some time, so we began to put this together. We had patents on a game called ‘The Millionaires Club,’ and we decided we would brand it with Monopoly because we had a Monopoly lottery license. So we submitted that bid I think in September 2013. We found out we won in April, and here we are in January of 2015 and we’re on the air with a weekly one-hour production.
Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.comOn the TV set of "Monopoly Millionaires' Club" hosted by Billy Gardell on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, at the Rio.
Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.comOn the TV set of "Monopoly Millionaires' Club" hosted by Billy Gardell on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, at the Rio.
Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.comOn the TV set of "Monopoly Millionaires' Club" hosted by Billy Gardell on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, at the Rio.
“We picked Las Vegas to shoot the show because all of the audience — the game players — are flown in from the various lottery states. They have all won the attractive lottery prize of a week’s vacation in Las Vegas. The contestants are selected from the audience.”
The crew filmed six shows over the weekend with host Billy Gardell, his first TV-hosting gig. We’ll have our full interview with Billy on Tuesday. Then there’s a break until the end of February when they will film another six shows.
“I think that’s how the schedule will run. We’ll produce six at a time, three a day,” added Steve. “We’re supposedly on air at least through August 2016. As long as we stay on the air, we’ll be filming here.”
I asked him to describe the show and explain why it won’t be seen on regular Las Vegas television except for the Game Show Network: “The reason it’s not on in Las Vegas is because you cannot have lottery promotion, marketing and advertising on a television station who’s transmitter isn’t a state that doesn’t have a lottery. Otherwise, this could have been a network program.
“So the networks would have had blackout affiliates in markets, and without seeing the show, they weren’t willing to do that. That doesn’t mean it might not be a network show because this show has its qualities.
“It is a non-skilled game show. In this game that just ended a little while ago, a woman came within a whisker of winning $1 million. She needed to roll a 5, and she rolled a 4 and the other die was tilted on the side. You could see the 1 and the 5, and it just fell to the 5, so she won $200,000 instead.
“We estimate that we’ll give away $1 million six times a year. That’s about as many times as it’s been given away in the history of television. I mean we think we will. We don’t know for sure because it conceivably could be every game — or never.
“Each mini-game on the TV show has a prize of $100,000; a top prize, but you can win other amounts, or you can go bust. It’s just a lot like the real game. We use Monopoly as the iconography. We have a game Ride the Rails, we have a game Electric Company, so it’s based on actual Monopoly iconography.
“We have Monopoly slot machines in our portfolios. We also have a Monopoly lottery license, the most popular third party in the lottery business. We probably printed close to $7 billion of Monopoly scratch tickets. The U.S. lottery business is annually about $65 billion, and almost 60 percent of that is scratch-off.
“We have 80 to 130 people involved. It’s a very big production, and it’s a big set. Billy Gardell is the host. He’s been great. Our executive producer is Scott St. John, who did ‘Deal or No Deal’ and ‘America’s Got Talent’ for NBC, ‘Win, Lose or Draw’ for Disney and now currently ‘Celebrity Name Game’ in syndication. He really knows this business.”
Kevin Belinkoff of “Scrabble Showdown” and “The Newlywed Game” is the other executive producer. Models Paige Collings and Korrina Rico are the two Monopoly Maidens.
Monopoly, which is available in 111 countries and 43 languages, has sold 275 million games around the world. Since its creation in 1935, more than 1 billion people have played the game. I once filmed San Francisco jeweler Sidney Mobell for “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” when he made the most expensive version — $2 million — with a 23-carat gold board and diamond-studded dice.
I watched as the audience was divided into five sections. Each of the five selected players is seated on a throne surrounded by his or her audience section. If they strike it rich, 50 percent of the winnings is divided among the section, and the player keeps 50 percent.
To reach the final round, they play the starter $100,000 round games, and each contestant can choose to keep their winnings or risk losing it all when they attempt to land on “Go” to win the $1 million prize. In the preliminary round, I watched a New York male contestant who had to fill a hotel room chart based on the number of guests arriving in different limousines without exceeding the accommodation limits on the three floors. It’s a lot tougher than it sounds.
The other challenges include a similar Parking Garage challenge, a Ride the Rails challenge and brain teasers at the 10 Community Chests, the Electric Company spaces, which light up bulbs for more cash prizes, a block party and opening five of six locks on the Monopoly bank correctly.
In every episode, audience members are featured on their hometown TV affiliate during a mini-game portion of the show, which is hosted by Daytime Emmy Award-winning game show host Todd Newton.
Our thanks to Tom Donoghue for his behind-the-scenes photos and his aerial shots of the “Monopoly Millionaire’s Club” studio. Don’t forget to check back Tuesday for our chat with Billy.
This may be the most ambitious TV game show ever, and it’s thoroughly entertaining. It’s one of the largest TV projects ever brought to Las Vegas, and judging from the audience enthusiasm when the confetti cannons and balloons exploded with the first two $1 million winners, it’s here for a long run.
Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past 15 years giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.
Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leac
