After the Game: What Happens to the Losing Team's Swag?
Somebody is going to lose the World Series. It’s true. I have heard this is how these things work. But, when the inevitable happens, where do all their commemorative hats, T-shirts, shoelaces, giant foam hands, etc. go? After all, nobody knows which team will win. To meet the instant, post-game demand, manufacturers have all that championship memorabilia—for both teams—made up and sitting in a warehouse before the final game is even a twinkle in an announcer’s eye.
If you guessed that it ends up in a dump, you’d be wrong. Mental_floss investigated and found the World Vision, an international Christian charity, gets the losing gear from baseball, football and basketball.
And the manufacturer gets a tax break for the donation. Knowing the way that large corporations work, I’m sure T-shirts for the losing team are valued at $30 for tax purposes just like the winning ones are — I guess the IRS doesn’t know which team won.
