What happens to the losing team’s championship merchandise?
After watching both of Sunday’s NFL conference championship games and seeing the winning teams players celebrating with their championship hats and t-shirts. It made me wonder what happens to the losing teams merchandise?
Companies already have hundreds of hats and t-shirts printed for both teams even before the game starts, so that they winning team can wear them for the pregame celebrations. This leaves hundreds of items that are considered “misprinted” and are basically useless in North America. For the longest time the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL would just have the losing team destroy the merchandise.
Working together with World Vision, the NFL set up an agreement that allows all of the unwanted hats and t-shirts to be sent to a developing third-world nation.
According to an article that appeared in The New York Times in 2007. After the Super Bowl the merchandise will be shipped out to a warehouse near Pittsburgh where they become property of World Vision. The clothing is then packages up into wooden boxes and sent over to third-world countries, usually in Africa.
I think that this is a great idea. I always thought that it was a big waste of money and clothing by having all of those shirts and hats thrown out after the championship game is over.
I always thought that all major sporting leagues should have done something better with all of the extra shirts and hats they made, rather than just destroying them. If they didn’t feel like sending them over seas there are many other ideas they could have used. They could have changed there printing process and just had the team receive the shirts a couple of hours after they won their respective championship. The only problem with this is that it had become a tradition and both players and fans loved to be able to receive the championship merchandise only moments after winning.
In the end the only sensible solution in which the NFL could agree upon was to send the merchandise to another country with people in need.
Some people may disagree with this and say that the clothing would be better uses by the less fortunate people across North America; but the NFL doesn’t want to cause any humiliation to the losing team. They agreement they made includes a law that states: “items are to never appear on television or on eBay. They are never to be seen on American soil”.
The NFL has been sending their unwanted clothing over seas for about the past ten years. It wasn’t up until 2007 when the MLB, NBA and NHL also joined the agreement with World Vision and sent their unwanted clothing over to Africa.
I hope that eventually all leagues realize that this is the best way to get rid of the unwanted championship merchandise. Rather than destroying hundreds of items of clothing, they are helping less fortunate people who need the clothing.
Kudos to the NFL for starting something that will benefit third-world countries for years to come.
Sources:
“Far Away, Super Bowl’s Losers Will Be Champs” – The New York Times
