What happens to the leftover merchandise after the Super Bowl?

After major sporting championships across all disciplines, the winner is immediately presented with merchandise declaring them champions. The winning team’s logo emblazoned across shirts and hats. But what happens to the apparel of the team that lost? 

When the Los Angeles Rams won Super Bowl LVI, they immediately paraded around the field in T-shirts declaring them the 2022 Super Bowl champions. Stores across the country will roll out racks filled with Rams apparel. Where did the carts of Cincinnati Bengals, 2022 Super Bowl Champions, apparel go?

Prior to 1997, the National Football League (NFL) said they would destroy the preprinted clothes, but since then they have partnered with organizations to donate and distribute these clothes. Good360, a nonprofit charity based out of Virginia, helps solve this problem. With warehouses across the country, they collect the ‘loser’s inventory’ immediately after the big game. This year, they also collected the AFC and NFC championship game’s gear as well. The NFL takes careful action to make sure that none of this incorrect merchandise finds itself in the hands of American consumers. Another company the NFL has worked with in the past is the Christian organization World Vision. They have the same philosophy: to help the impoverished and needy. According to World Vision, they annually donate $2 million worth of goods, which equates to 100,000 articles of clothing. 

“Football is part of the fabric of our lives. But we sometimes forget that American-style football teams don’t have significant awareness in the other parts of the world. For them, they’re happy to get new clothes,” said Shari Rudolph, Good360’s Chief Development Officer, to Yahoo. The NFL announced that over 112.3 million people tuned in to the Super Bowl this year. With both Cincinnati and Los Angeles fans rooting for their respective team, it makes sense that there is so much of this excess (incorrect) merchandise. 

The clothes are flown or shipped around the world to be distributed across disaster and impoverished areas. These clothes will get sent to countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Although, sometimes the merchandise that got sent abroad finds itself back to the United States or the Western European market. There have also been photographs taken showing the incorrect merchandise in the ‘top secret’ warehouses prior to packaging and distribution to second and third world countries. 

In an interview with Yahoo, Anna Isaacson, the NFL’s Senior Vice President of social responsibility said, “While a fan might find [an unusable championship T-shirt] interesting and fun, a novelty, we want to be sensitive to the team, no one likes to lose a championship game. The club put its heart and soul on the line, and we wouldn’t want to be seen as making fun of that.” It is understandable that they are concerned about the mindset of the losing team, because it would be disappointing to see shirts saying they won the game, knowing full well that they did not. 

As we celebrate the victory of our teams, we must acknowledge that these companies are printing up apparel that they know will never reach Americans. Even though the clothes do get donated, prior to 1997 they were mere garbage. Is the reward of immediately having the winning merchandise worth the conscience of knowing companies, hungry for money, are willing to create clothes that will get shipped away immediately after the big game?