Bettie Levy and Grammy-winner Darius Rucker wear shirts from Rucker’s NCAA line of clothing. Photo courtesy of BCL Entertainment

Celebrity Matchmaker

Bettie Levy connects the world’s biggest brands with the hottest celebrities

Bettie Levy’s career has been full of pinch-me moments, as she calls them. As a producer of events and broker of brand partnerships with some of the world’s most famous celebrities, Levy (’02) has gone from listening to her Fugees CD on drives with her high school friends to producing events featuring band members Wyclef Jean and Ms. Lauryn Hill. Levy regularly books Busta Rhymes for birthday parties and weddings and considers the legendary rapper a friend. She set up a partnership between Jif peanut butter and rapper Ludacris. But the pinch-me moment that takes the cake, she says, happened in September 2024, as Levy was present for the unveiling of a clothing partnership she helped arrange between Grammy Award-winning musician Darius Rucker and her alma mater, BU. 

Levy’s BCL Entertainment (BCLE) arranged the partnership between Rucker and sports behemoth Fanatics in 2020. Since then, Rucker’s apparel has featured the logo of every National Football League, Major League Baseball and National Hockey League team through universal licenses with the leagues. BCLE also pitches individual NCAA universities to gauge their interest in the clothing line, and more than 20 colleges have signed on. Despite having watched her parents, who are Emerson College alumni, remain connected to their alma mater, Levy says she’d lost touch with many of her BU contacts. When the opportunity to pitch BU on the Rucker line arose, she says she was excited. “In the back of my head, it was one of those bucket list dream-type moments of, wow, wouldn’t that be cool if I could go back to my school and do something special,” she says. 

Levy emailed Shane Cutler, BU’s assistant vice president of auxiliary services who oversees the Campus Store, explaining the licensing partnership and her own connection to the University. “He said, ‘Let’s do it,’” Levy recalls. The rest is history, as they say. At its ribbon-cutting in September, the revamped and renamed Campus Store featured four Darius Rucker-branded BU tops: a flannel button-up, a henley, a crew sweatshirt and a hoodie. “I am honored and humbled to be back at my school, and being invited to the opening of the BU Campus Store to see this beautiful wall of Darius Rucker product is so incredible,” Levy says. “I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

A Music Fan First

Levy feels she was destined to work in entertainment. When she was a kid growing up near Washington, D.C., her mother would send her to the mall with money to buy herself a new outfit. Levy says she’d instead spend it on CDs and tapes at Sam Goody. A few years later, the summer before her senior year at COM, Levy landed an internship with Sony Music after mailing résumés to the addresses of the record labels on the back of her Billy Joel CDs. 

When you match the correct talent to the correct event or partnership, there is such a genuine affection for what you’re trying to do that it makes all the difference. Authenticity is the key.

Bettie Levy

She spent the summer promoting Sony artists to radio stations in New York City, eventually landing an academic year internship with a local music promoter for Sony Music’s Boston branch. Once she dipped her toe in promotions as an intern, Levy never looked back. She had a job offer from Sony Music in New York City right out of BU, and she would stay with the company for five years, bouncing between subsidiary labels and departments but always promoting artists with radio stations or booking them on television shows like MTV’s Total Request Live and Cribs. When Don Ienner, the former CEO of Sony Music, left to start his own venture, IMO Entertainment, he asked Levy to join him. “This is 2007, 2008, and artists were becoming very interested in brand deals,” Levy says. “So I was dabbling in the brand space, continuing to book artists for appearances and performances, and overall generating any ideas I could for the company. Once I had that corporate and entrepreneurial experience, I knew I was in a position to start my own company.”

Thus, BCL Entertainment was born. That was 15 years ago. BCLE has planned and produced many corporate and charity events featuring artists like 50 Cent, Ice Spice and The Chainsmokers. Brand clients also approach BCLE seeking a celebrity to pitch their products, a process that involves Levy and her team making lists of musicians, athletes, actors or influencers who could match the company’s creative concept. BCLE’s brand partnership work has resulted in Trombone Shorty and Joan Jett sipping Folgers coffee and N*SYNC frontman JC Chasez selling Meow Mix cat food, to name a few.

“We really are there for our clients,” Levy says. “Because when you match the correct talent to the correct event or partnership, there is such a genuine affection for what you’re trying to do that it makes all the difference. Authenticity is the key.”

Hootie and the Terriers

For its clothing partnership with Fanatics and Darius Rucker, BU picked four styles from a menu of 29 to launch in September 2024. Levy says the lineup has something for everyone—all while proclaiming the wearer’s Terrier pride. “It’s a little workman, but Darius is also a little country, a little pop,” she says. “He’s about cool and comfortable, and the line also has a little bit of a rocker vibe. It’s technically a men’s line, but I wear the product all day long.” Just a few days after BU launched its Darius Rucker clothing line, BCLE announced that the National Hockey League had joined the Darius Rucker Collection, starting in Fall 2024.

“I’ve now been in this business for almost 25 years, and this business is all relationships-based,” Levy says. “It’s all about being able to pull together the right people, and I’m so thankful for the relationships that I and my company have. Relationships fuel everything I do.”