January the 25th, 2022 - How will Croatian Eurozone accession, which is rapidly approaching and currently due to happen at the very beginning of next year, affect game shows in which prizes are paid out to winners in Croatian kuna?
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Croatian Eurozone accession will occur on January the 1st, 2023, and then the euro will replace the kuna as the official currency in this country as well. At that moment, a lot will change, but what interests quiz and game show fans is whether or not the prize money in the popular show "Who wants to be a millionaire?" will increase from one million kuna to one million euros.
Vecernji list finds out that things in that regard are still very much up in the air.
''We haven't totally ruled out the possibility of competitors fighting for a prize of one million euros, but it's more likely that this won't be the case. It will be difficult to plan seven and a half times more funds for the prize fund in the production plan than is the case now. That's a real issue, but it hasn't really been discussed yet.
The originally British "Who wants to be a millionaire?" is also aired on many commercial TV stations in other countries as well, and in those countries, the fund is covered by sponsors. Maybe part of that fund could be covered by sponsors in this country as well.
''There are different options and they are all still being discussed, and when the time comes, we'll have to decide on what our format will look like,'' said Igor Grkovic, the editor of ''Who wants to be a millionaire?" and ''The Chase''.
''We won't have any problems with "The Chase", as the amount of cash offered for the answering of the questions will simply be converted from 3,500 kuna to 500 euros. As for "Who wants to be a millionaire?", we've seen many different examples on how that's done from other countries. Slovenians play for 100,000 euros, and countries such as Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania cancelled their versions of the show before joining the Eurozone. I guess they didn't want it to still be being called "Who wants to be a millionaire?" when the prize isn't a million euros,'' Grkovic said.
It is interesting to compare experiences in other countries. As previously touched on, "Who wants to be a millionaire?" started in the UK back in 1998 and has been broadcast in more than a hundred countries since. Regardless of the name, in some countries, much less than a million is won. For example, in the Albanian and Kosovar versions of the show, the highest prize was 50,000 euros. A new season of the show is being broadcast in Bulgaria, where the main prize is 100 thousand levs, or 385 thousand kuna, and in Greece, as well as in neighbouring Slovenia, the top prize is 100 thousand euros.
For more on Croatian Eurozone accession, check out our lifestyle section.
