Inside David Tetreault’s Plan to Turn BKB Into a Global Sports Franchise
Bare knuckle boxing has spent years on the periphery of combat sports, but under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer David Tetreault, BKB is making a real case for the mainstream. As head of the world’s largest professional bare knuckle boxing organization, Tetreault oversees global strategy, commercial growth, and international expansion for a company that has become one of the fastest-rising properties in the sport.
Tetreault joined BKB in 2025 after building a reputation across decades in sports media. He spent more than ten years as a senior marketing executive at 20th Century Fox, where he ran campaigns for shows like The Simpsons, American Idol, 24, and The X-Files. From there he moved into combat sports proper, joining Golden Boy Promotions as Chief Business Officer and eventual equity partner alongside Bernard Hopkins and Eric Gomez.
During roughly seven years at Golden Boy under Oscar De La Hoya, Tetreault helped negotiate network deals with Facebook Watch, ESPN, and HBO, and he led the record-setting $600 million agreement that made DAZN the exclusive home of Canelo Alvarez. He describes that deal plainly: “John and I carved out at the time what I think is the largest ever boxing promotional deal in history, making Canelo the highest paid athlete in the world.”
After Golden Boy, Tetreault spent time at Triller, where he handled content strategy, global television rights, and sponsorship integration. He also teaches graduate courses in Strategic Management, Sports Business, and Entertainment Marketing as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco and California State University, Los Angeles.
David Tetreault Vision for BKB
In a Forbes interview, Tetreault laid out how he wants people to see BKB. “I don’t look at BKB as just another promotion like Matchroom or BKFC or Top Rank or Golden Boy,” he said. “I look at us as a sports team, whether it’s like Manchester United, the L.A. Dodgers, the Boston Celtics.”
That framing shapes how BKB signs talent, blending seasoned boxers with former UFC and PFL names such as Victor Ortiz, Lee Selby, Aspen Ladd, Yuriorkis Gamboa, and the Vargas brothers. Tetreault has been vocal about wanting to add even bigger names, including public discussions with Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk about a possible bare knuckle bout inside the Trigon.
Storytelling is central to his plan. “There’s no way that we can flourish without telling the athlete’s stories,” Tetreault said, pointing to an in-house media division and a Bally’s-backed prospect series currently in development. That Bally’s partnership launches January 9 in Biloxi and brings casino integration, punch-tracking technology, and wider distribution into the mix.
BKB‘s digital growth has become one of Tetreault’s favorite talking points. He pointed to the promotion’s pilot TikTok live broadcast from the Lee Selby show in Cardiff on June 27: “We had the highest watch time of any sports platform ever in the history of TikTok live sports.” The channel has racked up more than 53 million likes since it went live in mid-April, and Tetreault places the achievement alongside major digital sports deals like Fox’s FIFA rights, ESPN, and Red Bull.
BKB currently airs across talkSPORT in the UK and Ireland, VICE TV in the US and Canada, and Telemundo for Spanish-language audiences, though the VICE agreement expires this year and talks are underway for a broader global broadcast partner. Tetreault has said the current VICE deal is up for renewal soon, with conversations in motion for wider international coverage.
Tetreault has framed his ambitions in a three-year window: turning BKB into a mainstream Saturday-night attraction that sells out arenas on a regular basis. “Our goal is to have this thing mainstreamed so that on a Saturday night… people are tuning in. We’re selling out arenas,” he said, quickly adding the caveat that shapes every decision he makes: “Without the right athletes, the right fighters on that stage, it doesn’t happen.”
With the Mexico debut approaching, a Bally’s-backed US push underway, and conversations continuing with names like Fury, Usyk, and Jake Paul, Tetreault’s BKB tenure so far reads like an attempt to turn a niche combat sport into a genuine global property.
