What happens to the losing team’s Super Bowl champions merchandise?

PHOENIX — Quickly after the final whistle at Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium Sunday, players from the winning team will put on hats and shirts commemorating their victory.

Thousands of apparel items are produced each year for both participants in the Super Bowl and each conference championship game to hand out quickly while the confetti falls.

So what happens to the goods displaying the losing team? Where are the Arizona Cardinals Super Bowl XLIII champions shirts?

“The non-winners, we can do something very useful and repurpose it for someone in great need,” CEO of Virginia-based nonprofit Good360 Romaine Seguin told told KTAR 92.3 FM’s Arizona’s Evening News on Friday.

Good360 connects with donors that have excess products due to returns, supply-chain issues and other situations — like printing thousands of shirts for the losing team at the Super Bowl — and matches the goods with nonprofits to find homes for them.

This is the ninth year of the NFL’s partnership with Good360.

“We vet the nonprofits, we have over 100,000 in our network, and we are like the matchmaker with the donors and the nonprofits to give back to the community, just like the NFL is doing a wonderful job with the non-winners,” Seguin said.

Seguin explained that she does not know specifically where the losing team’s merchandise will go after Sunday, noting her group works out logistics, gathers the gear and sends the goods where the nonprofits want them to go. She said the items will leave North America, as NFL merchandise has been distributed in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

To ensure the items don’t end up on the secondary market, Good360 vets a nonprofit’s Form 990, 501(c), mission and board, which Seguin said is a reason donors have partnered with it.

The organization and donors communicate on who is intended to receive the merchandise, be it children, veterans or homeless people.

“We are thankful for this longstanding partnership with the NFL, which reflects their commitment to charitable and responsible business practices and reinforces Good360’s mission of closing the need gap and opening opportunity for all,” said Seguin said in a press release.

The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII, 38-35. Commercials for Chiefs championship gear appeared moments following the end of the game.