KEY POINTS:
Auckland mayor John Banks says the chance to have Auckland represented on a world edition of the popular board game Monopoly is too good to pass up.
"Apparently 100 million people will play Monopoly's new world edition over the next five years," he said.
"To my mind that's 100 million good reasons to vote for Auckland in the wild card vote."
Monopoly maker Hasbro has taken to the internet in its quest to create a Here & Now World Edition of the popular game, and so far more than one million votes have been cast.
During an initial voting period, which finished on February 28, people were asked to choose their favourites from a pre-selected list of 68 cities.
Only the top 20 cities won a place on the board but it's not yet known which the favoured spots are - final results of the vote will not be announced until August.
The South Island city of Queenstown featured in the top 20 for much of the voting period but the leaderboard was removed several days before voting finished so it's not yet known if the adventure capital made the grade.
But the voting is not yet over.
A second round of ballot casting is now underway as voters are asked to choose which two wildcard cities will snap up the final spots on the board and Banks says Auckland should be one of them.
With just four days of voting left in the wildcard round, the leaderboard has once again been removed to prolong the suspense.
Auckland is one of the 20 wildcard cities selected but before the results table was removed, it sat at number 10 on the list with just 2 per cent of the vote - well behind Taipei's 24.2 per cent.
But Banks believes New Zealand's largest city still has a shot at board game fame and says it would be a great boon not only for Auckland, but for the whole country.
"Vote Auckland, pass go and collect 200 million eyes on New Zealand," he says.
The Top 10 on the wildcard leaderboard at last sighting were as follows:
1. Taipei
2. Gdynia
3. Szczecin
4. Quebec
5. Winnipeg
6. Novi Sad
7. San Francisco
8. Lvyv
9. Johannesburg
10. Auckland
Voting in the wildcard round ends on Sunday, March 10 at 2pm NZST.
To submit your votes, click here.
- NZ HERALD STAFF
