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N.H. Company Making Patriots’ Championship Shirts

Annie Ropeik / NHPR
Blue Dolphin Screen Printing employees prepared their equipment ahead of Super Bowl LIII.

A T-shirt company in Somersworth watched Sunday's Super Bowl from their factory floor.

Blue Dolphin Screen Printing is printing thousands of official championship T-shirts.

Co-owner Peter Myer and his staff were busy getting ready Sunday night to print the NFL's Patriots championship logo in different colors on as many as 30,000 short- and long-sleeved shirts.

"Well, we think we're going to win,” he said before the big game. “We're kind of counting on it at this point."

His game day prep involved a plan to head to the shop at halftime, where the staff will eat sandwiches and watch the second half.

Blue Dolphin was only going to fire up its screen-printing machines if and when it became clear the Patriots would capture their sixth championship Sunday. They worked through the night and into the morning.

If Sunday’s game had gone another way, the staff would have been sent home and the blank shirts recycled.

Myer says they're one of a handful of New England companies booked to make these shirts.

"But there's probably six shops set up in LA the same way,” he says. “So some people are sleeping and some people aren't on Sunday night."

Credit Annie Ropeik / NHPR
Blue Dolphin co-owner Peter Myer shows off the official Patriots conference champion shirt they made this season.

Myer says Blue Dolphin has made lots of shirts for the Patriots before – including after this year’s conference championship.

In fact, he says NFL distributor they’re making these shirts for probably wanted the Patriots to lose that game and miss their shot at a sixth Super Bowl ring.

“The market gets saturated … we’re spoiled up here,” he says, smiling. “They’re looking for the strong market, which is the team that hasn’t been there before.”

Annie has covered the environment, energy, climate change and the Seacoast region for NHPR since 2017. She leads the newsroom's climate reporting project, By Degrees.
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