The Super Bowl LVIII is right around the corner and only one of the two great teams will taste the glory while the other team will have to move on by accepting the bitter truth. With the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers set to meet up in Vegas only one team will embrace the champions title, which will lead to the distribution of mislabeled Super Bowl LVIII jerseys overseas.
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Well, it has become a yearly tradition, but one might wonder why.
With the Super Bowl winners being decided in the nick of time during a three-hour-long game. There is very little time to print the necessary merch for the champions since the celebration starts right after the final whistle. To save time, the companies produce champion’s merch for both the participating teams in the Super Bowl, but only one is used.
However, even if a team loses the big game, there aren’t any losers when it comes to the mislabeled merch. Thanks to the initiative taken by World Vision, the merch with the mislabeled team name on it gets shipped to impoverished countries in need.
What do they do with all the extra unsold MAGA gear that was being sold throughout neighborhoods across America? Donate it to World Vision, and it winds up in Zambia, the same place where 2007 Chicago Bears Super Bowl Champs apparel wound up? pic.twitter.com/pQGCPPQE0v
— Tyler Bleszinski (@papiblez) November 6, 2020
It has become a yearly tradition for the National Football League as it has been donating losing team merch for 28 years now. However, some may even argue whether it’s more of a closet cleaning drive than a donation campaign.
World Vision on Supplying Losing Team Super Bowl Merch Overseas
Throughout the years mislabeled Super Bowl jerseys have been shipped to countries like El Salvador, Indonesia, Haiti, Zambia, Armenia, Nicaragua, and Romania among many others.
“The NFL is pleased to once again work with World Vision to ensure that usable Super Bowl apparel does not get thrown out, especially when there are so many around the globe who have never had a brand-new item of clothing in their lives,” said David Krichavsky in 2011, the then NFL Director of Community Affairs.
However, it’s not just the Super Bowl merch that is used for aid. World Vision also works with the likes of the NBA, NHL, and MLB to provide brand-new clothes to needy children across the world.
“This is a great opportunity to show people that they are cared for and that their wellbeing is a priority,” said Jeff Fields, World Vision’s senior director for corporate relations. “Having personally distributed the Super Bowl gear overseas in years past, I have seen how much joy the children and families get out of receiving new clothes.”
“World Vision is incredibly thankful the NFL is working with us to help others around the world,” Fields said. “We work in the most impoverished areas of nearly 100 countries, so we already have all the systems in place to identify families and distribute these brand new clothes to them.”
Just like that the merch of the losing team of the Super Bowl LVIII will be put to good use after being shipped overseas to help impoverished nations once again.
