PROVO, Utah — Utah County software company Gigg has entered into a one year sponsorship with the BYU Athletics Built4Life program. Gigg is a software company that offers a variety of user generated content curation tools for brands. Gigg's mission is to empower brands to share and connect with the world by providing the highest quality products and services that engage, enlighten and entertain.
Gigg has provided $250,000 to the Built4Life program as its marquee sponsor. This money will help finance Built4Life initiatives. Built4Life is a wholistic career development and life skills program for BYU student-athletes that will prepare them for life beyond BYU Athletics and help them capitalize on Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) opportunities.
“At the heart of Built4Life is our program's commitment to foster a culture of love and learning, while assisting student-athletes in laying the foundation required for personal and economic prosperity beyond athletics,” said Kalani Sitake, BYU football head coach. “With that in mind, we enthusiastically thank Gigg’s CEO & Founder, Scott Warner, and the rest of the Gigg team for supporting Built4Life. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with this great company.”
In a meeting with Gigg and BYU Athletics senior leadership on Tuesday, Warner expressed his excitement about the partnership and his family’s long legacy of supporting BYU Athletics. It’s a legacy that includes Warner’s grandfather, Dick Warner, employing current BYU director of athletics Tom Holmoe at Warner Electric in Long Beach, Calif., in the summer of 1982, while Holmoe was a BYU football player. Holmoe spoke of the importance Dick Warner played in his progression as a student-athlete, serving as a mentor off the field for him. Facilitating mentorship opportunities like that for BYU student-athletes today is a fundamental emphasis of the Built4Life program.
“This partnership with Gigg is a terrific milestone for our Built4Life program,” Holmoe said. “Built4Life is only six weeks old, but is already being warmly received by our community here in Utah and Salt Lake counties. We are grateful to Gigg for their interest in helping elevate Built4Life. Since the launch of this program there has been lots of local interest to partner with this initiative, and we feel that we could not have asked for a better marquee sponsor than Gigg. Gigg is innovative and positively disruptive in the tech world — something that we hope Built4Life will do in the student-athlete development space. The resources obtained through this sponsorship will be used to help provide our student-athletes with rich experiential learning opportunities, obtain access to world-class professional and life skills education and training, and shine through major service efforts and other charitable causes. There is nothing more important in our role as BYU Athletics employees than to provide the best possible experience to our student-athletes, and this sponsorship is another resource to execute that mission.”
NIL changes initiated by the NCAA have allowed student-athletes to take control over their opportunities and market themselves in a way that has never been possible before. Built4Life was sparked in the wake of this change with the NCAA and will continue to operate as part of BYU for the coming years. Built4Life goes hand-in-hand with BYU to help its athletes maximize their potential as more than just athletes, but as mothers, fathers, professionals and overall, happy, successful human beings.
This partnership is one of many examples of the benefit to BYU of being housed in what the Milken Institute has dubbed as the best-performing city economy in the nation and the U.S. News and World Report has named the best state economy in the nation. The vast amount of businesses and business leaders available in the Provo-Orem area and beyond, offers quality access and a myriad of opportunities for BYU student-athletes.