Crimson Collective’s NIL Utah Utes Vehicle Lease Deal Offers Retention Strategy in Transfer Era

Decades ago, talk-show titan Oprah Winfrey famously gave away a car to each member of her studio audience, stunning the recipients (and the rest of us) with the generous, high-value and unprecedented surprise. The famous stunt is still talked about today. Twenty years later, the non-profit Crimson Collective has done something similar for its student-athletes — twice in three months. “We actually got people saying we ‘out-Oprah-ed Oprah,’ ” explains streaming-app CEO Derek Mattsson, whose company works with the collective. “It was a fun experience because, really, the excitement and just seeing the athletes’ responses — that was the most rewarding part.”

At a reveal event at the University of Utah in December 2023, the women’s basketball, gymnastics and men’s basketball student-athletes were offered a choice of a 2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee L Limited Edition or a 2024 Ram 1500 Big Horn truck as part of a name, image and likeness deal. The trucks are leased and managed by United Fleet Management and underwritten by private donors. Sizzle reels of the event show the joyful chaos of the athletes running to scope out the vehicles, jumping and shrieking, celebrating and hugging one another as they crowd around the parked Rams and Jeeps. “They were absolutely crazy. We thought it would be big, but I had no idea,” says Mattsson, whose company For The Win 360 created the Utah 360 smartphone app. “I mean, first of all, just seeing the reaction of the athletes, they were totally surprised. Their reaction was amazing.”

The lease and insurance costs are provided by donors to the Crimson Collective for as long as each student is on scholarship and eligible, ensuring every player is acknowledged and appreciated for their contributions and encouraged to give back to local Utah communities.

The December event for the basketball and gymnastics teams was the Crimson Collective and FTW360’s second giveaway, as the football team was offered a similar deal three months earlier in an equally glee-filled, raucous reveal on the field at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Utah 360 streaming app

“We really saw the whole evolution of NIL and college athletics, and we were really trying to help student-athletes promote their name, image and likeness,” Mattsson says. “We came up with the idea of putting together a streaming app that just covered University of Utah athletics.”

Mattsson, who has 25 years of experience in television and digital media, said the app creates a video storefront for the Crimson Collective to commercialize the opportunities for each student-athlete. “One of the things we’ve learned is with student-athletes, the most popular things that they are looking for is first: scholarship. Second is housing. And the third was transportation, and no one ever really addressed transportation,” Mattsson says. “[The lease deal] is just one example of how FTW360 is working with the Crimson Collective to create new opportunities to benefit every student-athlete.”

The breadth of Utah video content in the Utah 360 app — available in the Google Play and Apple stores — is meant to engage and bring app users back for more, and then the app can be monetized by selling advertising or corporate sponsorships. “The idea was to take all of the behind-the-scenes stories of Utah athletics from every team, whether it’s getting to know each player, understanding the team dynamics, interviews with coaches, highlights of games, pregame, I mean, any kind of thing you would imagine,” Mattsson explains. “We have stories about families that have been tailgating for 50 years, and we cover basically every angle of every single sport for the university with video, and we’ve put it into the app. We created all the technology, we’ve helped a lot with production, but the whole mission is to get a lot of university fans to follow the app, and through that, we will sell corporate sponsorships and advertising. The proceeds then go back to the athletes who supported the NIL program.”

The Crimson Collective and FTW360 both claim the deal was the biggest NIL single donation ever to an entire team. “There have been a lot of NIL efforts for the stars or the super athletes, where they get paid for their name, image and likeness,” Mattsson says. “We were the first to really do it for the entire teams.”

The Crimson Collective, in its mission to support and empower student-athletes, and FTW360 are creating a new reason for donors to support their collectives, by offering greater exposure to the brands and sponsors that are contributing to the athletes.

But the Jeep and Ram lease deals also created a new benefit in the NIL era for the athletics department, too. Says Mattsson, “It’s been a very effective tool for not only recruitment, but retention for students to stick around versus entering the [transfer] portal.”