Starting strong
“Click the link to get your Emmy!”
When those words popped up in her inbox this spring, Bailey Prete ’24 was pretty sure she was the target of some sort of phishing scam. Like a free cruise or a million dollar check, the sender was dangling something they knew she couldn’t resist, hoping she’d take the bait.
“An Emmy? That’s my soft spot,” she joked. “That’s what I would dream about.” She wisely scrolled past.
But later that day, curiosity got the better of her. Prete, an aspiring sports broadcaster who worked as a freelance content associate for NBCUniversal during the Paris Olympics last summer, sent her former producer a quick text.
“I said, ‘Are they playing with me here?’” she recalled. “And she responded, ‘Oh, that’s real,’ and I was just flabbergasted. I didn’t even know we were nominated so it all came as a huge surprise.”
Winning a Sports Emmy isn’t how most new graduates kick off their careers, but neither is working on one of the largest broadcasts in sports history. For 16 days last summer, Prete assisted producers in NBC’s Stamford, Connecticut, studios as they churned out more than 7,000 hours of Olympic coverage, attracting more than 30.4 million viewers. A final broadcast celebrating the totality of the Summer Games, to which Prete’s team contributed, was what garnered the Emmy for Outstanding Live Special in a Championship Event, beating out the U.S. Open and the World Series.
For her first Olympics, Prete worked alongside industry veterans assigned to cover seven events, including fencing, archery, shooting, and artistic swimming. Much of her time was spent sifting through footage, cutting and logging clips that could be used for instant replays or prime time coverage. She also worked with statisticians and researchers to craft questions and soundbites for on-air broadcasters to use during their segments.
“The hours were crazy,” Prete recalled. “I was waking up at midnight because we were on Paris time, and ending the day at 4 p.m. My adrenaline was pumping but so was the caffeine.”
Prete grew up in a sport-loving household (the family dog was named Fenway) and played club field hockey at BC, where she arrived as a transfer student her junior year. Some of her favorite moments on the Heights came during football tailgates, and she was a regular at hockey, baseball, and women’s lacrosse games.
Prete was an avid tennis and soccer player growing up, and played club field hockey at BC.
Professors in the Communication Department helped her explore career paths in media where she could apply her passion for sports. Through their connections, she landed an internship at FOX Sports and a part-time role at NESN, where she worked in the broadcast booth with legendary Bruins commentators Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley. In her down time, she hosted a podcast, The Daily Bailey, where she interviewed athletes about their mental health journeys.
“I love the exhilaration of live sports but I also love connecting with people and hearing their stories,” she explained. “To me, sports broadcasting is the perfect marriage between entertainment and learning about people’s real experiences.”
This summer, Prete started a new position as a broadcast associate for the National Football League, where she’s working with producers to craft broadcasts that satisfy both league and network standards. In addition to preseason and regular season games, Prete’s team is busy year-round laying the groundwork for annual broadcasts like the NFL Combine and Super Bowl, which drew a record-breaking 127 million viewers earlier this year.
Shortly before her first day, and three weeks after almost deleting the suspicious email, Prete received her golden Emmy statue in the mail. Initially, she planned to display it in her New York City apartment, but when her mother asked to keep it on their mantle at home, Prete couldn’t say no.
“My biggest takeaway from all this is that your family and the people you keep close are the most important, so I share this with them,” she said. “We’ll have joint custody.”