After the 2020 edition of the game was interrupted by the Covid pandemic, and the prospect of gathering paper game tokens in stores became less palatable and less possible for many shoppers, the 2021 edition went all-digital. That said, the game “as we know it” had already changed before it was sidelined last year. At that time, the “Shop Play Win” website was still operational, though frozen in time on the previous year’s contest, whereas today, the website is completely down.Īnd with Albertsons currently focused on its proposed merger with Kroger, which may or may not want to inherit the game and assume the responsibility of expanding it to its own nearly two dozen chains, it’s not out of the question to presume that the Monopoly game as we know it may be gone for good. “Unfortunately, we will not be offering the Monopoly game this year in our stores,” Albertsons spokesperson Jessica Keener told Coupons in the News – the very same quote she offered last year, when the game was paused for the first time in 13 years. These days, as regulators scrutinize Albertsons’ plan to merge with its larger rival Kroger to become a coast-to-coast grocery powerhouse, you can’t necessarily blame the retailer for not wanting to be associated with the word “monopoly.”įor the second year in a row – and perhaps permanently – the long-running Monopoly Shop, Play, Win game typically played this time each year at Albertsons, and nearly two dozen Albertsons-owned chains like Safeway, Randall’s, Jewel-Osco and Shaw’s, has been shelved.

Safeway monopoly