It’s shot at the Rio, hosted by Billy Gardell (Mike and Molly), in a custom-made 48,000-square-foot studio in the east parking lot. It’s played on what’s reputed to be the largest LED screen built for TV ever – 900 square feet, comprising 62,220,800 lights. Filming of the show requires 10 cameras, including several that are robotic and mounted on overhead tracks. The game is also played out on 25 HDTV sets alternating with a 473,976-pixel LED screen. Miles of cable support all this high-tech glitz.
The monster set is the brainchild of Scientific Games Production, while the show itself was dreamt up by executive producers Scott St. John (Deal or No Deal) and Kevin Belinkoff (The Newlywed Game). Nevada tax credits to the tune of $2.5 million helped them get their Vegas studio built. Scientific Games may also use some of the tax-credit monies to move its corporate offices from New York to Sin City.
Shows are taped three at a time, six a week. However, you can’t tune in to a local Nevada station and watch them, nor will Monopoly ever be seen on network TV. Broadcast rules prevent the promotion of lottery products and transmission of lottery byproducts in states that don’t have lotteries, and "Monopoly" is only legal in 23 states. Aye, there’s the rub: Nevada has no state lottery and participants in the Monopoly TV game are chosen from among the winners of the Monopoly-branded lottery game. But don’t despair: If TV stations in your area don’t air Monopoly, you can always catch it on Game Show Network.
So why 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," Scientific President Steve Saferin told the Las Vegas Sun. "They have all won the attractive lottery prize of a week’s vacation in Las Vegas. The contestants are selected from the audience … As long as we stay on the air we’ll be filming here." Interestingly, the studio audience of 375 winners of the Monopoly lottery-terminal game stay not at The Rio, but at Planet Hollywood.
The five contestants for each show are chosen via a random drawing. Each is then enthroned in one of five bleacher sections in the studio and they split their winnings 50/50 with that section of the audience. The top prize in the mini-games that precede the climactic round is $100,000. For the main game, contestants are dressed up as Monopoly game tokens: a cat, a battleship, etc., as they make their way around the board.
"We estimate that we’ll give away $1 million six times a year," Saferin told the Sun, with just a touch of hype. "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."
