Dutch professional cyclist and successful YouTube video creator Bas Tietema is launching a UCI Continental team, with international bookmaker Unibet on board as a sponsor.
The TDT-Unibet Cycling Team is set to be registered in the sport's third tier for 2023, but the management harbours lofty ambitions for its future.
"Our mission is to progress to the Pro Continental cycling level and ride the biggest cycling races in the world," Tietema said in a recent video.
A former BMC Development Team rider turned popular YouTuber, Tietema's channel has amassed over 24 million views and more than 150,000 subscribers in a matter of years.
Alongside showing their zany interactions with the sport's top riders, the Tour de Tietema channel has also documented its creator's return to the pro peloton with Belgian ProTeam Bingoal Pauwels Sauces WB.
Tietema will be racing as part of his own TDT-Unibet team in 2023, while Briton Harry Tanfield (Ribble Weldtite) is among five riders who have reportedly also signed with them.
Former Dutch national track coach Hugo Haak will be the team's manager, while the race programme is expected to be predominantly based in Belgium and the Netherlands.
"We are extremely proud to work together with Tour de Tietema. Their dedication combined with their boldness to do things differently is a big inspiration," said Lennart Kessels, Dutch general manager of the Kindred Group, the online gambling operator which owns Unibet.
"It's an honour to help make their long-lived dream to start a cycling team a reality. Besides, the cycling world is not new to us as Unibet previously sponsored a cycling team back in 2006 and 2007. We are therefore convinced that we can fuel the ambitions of this new cycling team."
That ill-fated foray involved legal battles as ASO refused to allow Unibet in its races, citing anti-gambling laws. Rigoberto Urán, Frank Vandenbroucke, José Rujano and Baden Cooke all raced for the team that collapsed in 2007 amid the weight of the battle between the UCI and ASO.
This project has the potential to give a behind-the-scenes insight into the workings of a cycling team, as well as the highs and lows.
There are parallels to be drawn with other sports and YouTube teams. In football, the British team Hashtag United was created in 2016 as an outfit of friends playing exhibition matches. It has snowballed, going on to compete in the FA Cup and gain a following of more than 600,000 subscribers on the video platform.
This summer, Tietema and his collaborators were delivering pizzas to the Tour de France peloton on the Champs-Élysées. In the not-so-distant future, their team could be the ones handing out a beating in the sport's most prestigious race.
