Grande Prairie-Opoly coming to Walmart shelves (Photo Credit: Outset Media)

By Shane Clausing

Grande Prairie-Opoly

Grande Prairie-Opoly coming to Walmart shelves

Aug 12, 2020 | 1:01 PM

The City of Grande Prairie is once again getting featured in it’s own Monopoly-style board game.

Grande Prairie-Opoly is hitting Walmart shelves in Grande Prairie this week after the company Outset Media partnered with Walmart Canada to bring the game to the city.

Several years ago, Outset Media and Walmart Canada teamed up with each other to bring community Opoly specific games to smaller cities and towns across Canada, so they could help represent smaller communities.

“Walmart came to us almost two years ago and asked if we’d create a line of Opoly games celebrating towns across Canada. And we said, ‘sure, we’d love to!’” explained J.P. Teskey, the Vice President of Outset Media. “We started with the usual suspects like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.”

Teskey says while they added the bigger cities into the game, adding smaller cities have been a big success.

Meaningful Mementos

Remembering Someone You've Lost at Christmas

Dec 03, 2024

Seasonal Sorrow

How Do You Get Through The Holidays When You're Grieving?

Nov 01, 2024

Upcoming Events at Oliver's

Grief & Loss and Estate Planning Seminars

Oct 02, 2024

“Last year, we found our best-selling game was a smaller town in Ontario called Sarnia. We sold more Sarnia-Opoly’s than Toronto and Vancouver combined. So, we decided this year, we are going to focus on smaller and mid-sized towns and communities and with great success.”

“Grande Prairie was one of the ones we thought was going to be a perfect fit for an Opoly game this year.”

The Grande Prairie-Opoly game will feature several local landmarks in the city that residents are familiar with. Teskey explained how they created the game from scratch.

“We have a team in our Victoria office who does research online and if we feature a local business, we just call to make sure everything is up to date, that these are still around and these places still made sense.”

“We feature the Art Gallery, Prairie Mall Shopping Centre, parks like Lions Park or Crystal Lake Park, so we try and cover not just the usual streets and the known places, we try to hit some businesses too.”

Local businesses like the Broken Oak Distilling Company and Ramona’s Pizza are also featured in the game.

Photo Credit: Outset Media

“We don’t ask for money for this, this is all just meant to be fun and to celebrate the communities.”

Outset Media has acquired the rights from Parker Brothers (who created Monopoly) to be able to use the Opoly name and Opoly style of play.

Photo Credit: Outset Media

However, Teskey explains that there are some slight differences to the game compared to the regular Monopoly game you would normally play at home.

“There’s no free parking. Instead of going to jail you’re stuck in a traffic jam and a few other things are changed around. But the basic premise of the look and the play is for sure the same.”

Sales for the game are limited. Teskey said that across Canada they’ve created 100 plus games and only produce 720 games at a time and once they’re sold-out, they’re gone.

Teskey added that he’s excited to get the game on the shelves.

“It’s a perfect fit to celebrate a community by having locations and businesses that are in the community on a board like this. It’s been a fun year and a half, almost two years doing this.”