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Flip the TV channel to QVC or visit Amazon while the confetti is still flying at Levi’s Stadium and you’ll see merchandise for the winning Super Bowl team ready to be ordered, with arrival the next day. Sporting goods stores, meanwhile, will be offering commemorative T-shirts and sweatshirts as soon as their doors open on Monday.
Of course, that means only one thing: Celebratory merch for both teams has to be manufactured and ready to go in advance. Which, if you do the math, equals 50 percent of the products that can’t be used.
So what happens with the losing team’s promo apparel? Well, unlike the team and its fans, it gets a happy ending, thanks to some partnerships the NFL has made.
According to Sporting News, for the last decade or so, a Virginia-based company, Good360, has worked with the NFL to make certain that unused items go to people in need. (They do the same with Major League Baseball, by the way).
The article notes, “This effort brings unused championship shirts and other merchandise to Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and it includes the apparel of losing teams from the conference championship games as well.”
The approach works because production of apparel begins early. With a Super Bowl win (or a conference win, for that matter), time is of the essence for maximizing revenue when selling apparel. People want to buy merchandise online immediately. If they had to wait weeks for items to be produced and shipped, the demand would die back, along with sales.
That puts the onus on sellers to have apparel for both teams on hand prior to the big game, and then to pull out the right items and start ringing up the sales.
In case you’re wondering, T-shirts and sweatshirts are the first items to be produced because they are the fastest, easiest and least expensive to create in bulk. More specialized items, like socks, flags and commemorative jerseys go into production once the game ends. The creation of even more esoteric apparel, like team-specific ugly Christmas sweaters and garden gnomes can take a little longer as well.
So that means the items that must be disposed of immediately are the T-shirts and sweatshirts for the losing team. And that’s where Good360 comes in, says USA TODAY:
“The process begins well before we find out who will be playing in the Super Bowl. The NFL and Good360 work together to come up with a list of countries where things could be sent, mostly in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America.
After a list is approved, Good360 then reaches out to its nonprofit partners in those countries to see which places are most in need. After the Super Bowl, the NFL gives retailers instructions on what to do with the losing team's apparel. All of the items are then sent to one location in the United States.”
By the way, the NFL doesn't allow any of the losing team's gear to stay in either North or South America.
“These goods have to leave the United States,” Good360’s marketing officer Shari Rudolph told USA TODAY. “The NFL and the teams themselves don't want to have it here in the country and finding their way back into consumers' hands, probably for all the obvious reasons.”
Remember reading about the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline? That’s what the NFL wants to avoid here.
Items celebrating the wrong team, notes SwagCycle, “are not meant for sale due to licensing agreements with leagues and manufacturers.”
It therefore calls for a certain strategy, Rudolph told USA TODAY reporters, since “maintaining the entire operation's secrecy is critical, as it can take a few weeks, possibly months, to get everything to one spot and send it out. Good360 waits to ship until containers can be completely filled.”
In fact, secrecy is so important that Good360’s company voicemail includes a prompt in case a security breach needs to be reported. (We checked.)
And yes, while having a shirt with the wrong winner on it sounds like a great joke and a fun collector’s item to brag about, the reality is that where such clothing is headed, it can make far more important difference on quality of life. Clean, well-made and wearable clothing, like sweatshirts or T-shirts, is something many people do not have. New clothing (no matter what it says on the front), is a luxury, and recipients don’t know, and frankly couldn’t care less, about the Super Bowl.
Sporting News says that Good360 has “stringent compliance protocols” that prevent donated items from ending up on the market and in the hands of anyone else.
“Good360 will work closely with international NGOs to ensure that the apparel goes directly into the hands of the right communities—and not some place where someone might be able to profit from it,” Rudolph told reporters at The Hill. “We also take pains to avoid sending the apparel to a location where a flood of donated clothing could disrupt the local economy.”
Information on Good360’s relationship with the NFL can be found here.
Mental Floss said this is not the NFL’s first partnership to donate goods: “Good360 took over the NFL’s excess goods distribution in 2015. For almost two decades prior, an international humanitarian aid group called World Vision collected the unwanted items for MLB and NFL runners-up at its distribution center in Pittsburgh, then shipped them overseas to people living in disaster areas and impoverished nations.
After the Arizona Cardinals lost Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, gear was sent to children and families in El Salvador. In 2010, after the New Orleans Saints defeated Indianapolis, the Colts gear printed up for Super Bowl XLIV was sent to earthquake-ravaged Haiti.”
It turns out to be a win for someone, no matter who takes home the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
In all, says SwagCycle, Good360 has distributed more than $9 billion in goods since the organization’s inception and also works with other partners, including Nike and Disney, to facilitate donations.
"Certainly, we don't want any of these items in landfills," Romaine Seguin, Good360’s CEO, told reporters with Scripps. "They can be used by someone, and that's the beauty of it."
Of course, the next question becomes whether (and how) the apparel created around this summer’s FIFA World Cup will sell and, if necessary, be disposed of responsibly. But that’s a story for another time.
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