This article is part of a seven-part series featuring NC alumni who are finalists for this year’s Ontario Premier’s Awards. Amy Audibert (Broadcasting -Radio, Television and Film, 2012) has been nominated in the Creative Arts and Design category.
As she blazes a trail for women into the broadcast booths of globally followed sports organizations, Niagara College grad Amy Audibert is breaking down barriers and opening doors for future generations of young women.
The journey has not been easy, but Audibert is no ordinary competitor.
At first glance, her path from NC to TV/Radio Analyst with the NBA’s Miami Heat is an uplifting story of historic milestones. She was the first woman to call an NBA game in Canada. (TSN 1050), In 2021 she made broadcast history when she was the studio analyst for the first all-female NBA broadcast on TSN. Then, in 2023 she became one of only three women who have ever broadcast an NBA Finals.
The reality, however, was gruelling: years of scrambling to find work — often unpaid — then getting herself to obscure high school or college games, desperate to get the experience that was needed to refine her on-air skills, refusing to abandon her goal of broadcasting with the NBA.
Audibert knows basketball.
At 17 she was recruited by the NCAA Division 1 University of Miami Hurricanes, where she became captain, then later she helped coach varsity teams back home in Canada (including at Niagara College).
It was broadcasting she needed to learn.
After her playing career ended, Audibert says “the stars aligned” when in 2010 she enrolled in Niagara College’s Radio, Television and Film program. Niagara represented an opportunity to start seriously working on chasing dreams — big dreams.
“I was already 24,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to waste any time. I wanted to be a sports broadcaster, but I didn’t know how to do that.
“Talking in front of a camera? Wearing a headset? How do you get jobs doing these things if you don’t know how?
“Niagara College offers exactly what you need in an industry like this. I don’t know where I would have been able to get to without this program. The only way you can get better is by doing it, and the college taught us to do that.”
She wanted nothing less than working full-time in the NBA. It’s a league with millions of fans around the world, but only a handful of broadcast jobs. The competition is ferocious.
After graduating from NC, Audibert spent a decade working non-stop, making her way to jobs big and small.
She never turned anything down, doing commentary on sports well outside of her comfort zone, like lacrosse, hockey or football. Once, as a sideline reporter for three consecutive high school football championship games at Buffalo’s Orchard Park Stadium, she was on the field for 12 hours on a freezing cold day.
After the first game, the winning team dumped Gatorade over their coach during the post-game interview. By day’s end, the same ice still on the turf, had barely changed form.
“I could hardly feel my fingers,” she recalls. “It was a day I will never forget because I was so miserable — freezing cold, and still severely broke.”
It was exhausting. Some days it was difficult to keep the dream alive.
“I loved it. I wasn’t the best at the world at it, but I knew I wasn’t bad. I just knew I needed that one shot, one break.”
Between seasons she worked 12-hour shifts as a server at a Niagara Falls casino, earning enough to pay her own way to the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, where she could network with NBA broadcasters.
She did University of Buffalo basketball broadcasts; was courtside reporter for the Canadian Elite Basketball League; covered the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream; got bits of paid work in support roles for games at CBS Sports, NBA TV and ESPN+; did analysis in the studios back home for women’s basketball during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In 2021, things began to change. Audibert was hired as a courtside analyst doing Toronto Raptors games on Sportsnet; worked as TV analyst for Raptors 905, Toronto’s affiliate in the NBA minor league; and was part of that first-ever all-female NBA broadcast team on TSN.
Then, a year later, Audibert learned of an opening on the Miami Heat broadcast team. She applied, sent in her resumé and voice tapes and got an interview.
The Heat hired her as a radio and TV analyst, calling games and doing pre- and post-game shows. No scrambling from one job to the next, no chasing interviews down at courtside. After years of paying her dues, Audibert was under contract and “in the booth” as a full-time commentator in the NBA.
The dream came true.
“She’s been absolutely fantastic,” says Jason Jackson, the Miami Heat’s veteran host and Audibert’s broadcast partner. “Her acumen is just off the charts.”
