USAOPOLY games
Carlsbad, CABrand
USAOPOLY is an American board game company based in Carlsbad, California, founded in 1994 by Dane Chapin and his sisters. They started with a Hasbro license to make city-themed editions of Monopoly, and the business really took off after a 1996 Atlanta Olympics edition sold out after Chapin found himself with thousands of excess Monopoly games and no plan to sell them, so he rented a van and personally sold the boards on the streets of Atlanta for two weeks. That moment convinced Hasbro to expand the company’s licensing rights well beyond city editions.
From there, the company’s catalog grew to include themed Monopoly versions for colleges, NASCAR, Coca-Cola, and The Simpsons, then branched into other classic games like Chess, Checkers, Dominoes, Backgammon, Bingo, Cribbage, Poker, and Bunco. Over time it picked up licenses for other well-known franchises too, including Clue, Munchkin, Trivial Pursuit, and Codenames.
In 2019 the company rebranded as The Op (short for The Operations Inc.), though it still uses the USAOPOLY name in its marketing and on its website. Beyond licensed reissues, the company built its own original game line, headlined by Telestrations, a sketch-and-guess party game that became one of the best-selling titles in the category. Its broader partner list now includes Disney, Marvel, Nintendo, Warner Bros., Cartoon Network, FOX, and Nickelodeon, alongside Hasbro.
As of recent reporting, the company brought back founder Dane Chapin as CEO in 2022, with plans to push beyond board games and puzzles into a wider family entertainment business, including a digital version of Telestrations and talk of a TV adaptation.
