Bas Tietema is standing on a hay bale in the middle of a vast, ploughed French field. Behind him the sun is setting in orange hues, and as it dips beneath the tree-lined horizon, the camera pans around Tietema’s gangly figure. A heavy bass kicks in, and he begins thrashing his hands in finger guns. Next he’s swigging bubbly from a bottle like a reveller welcoming the dawn. The year is 2019, and the Dutchman and his friends, Josse Wester and Devin van der Wiel, are at the Tour de France making content for their new YouTube channel, Tour de Tietema. This is their seventh video: a techno track dedicated to the afternoon’s stage winner, Dylan Groenewegen.
The video today has more than 130,000 views. Tietema’s lyrics consist predominantly of Groenewegen’s full name, repeated to the beat. “He didn’t really love the song, because his son played it over and over again,” Tietema laughs as we chat by video call. Days later, when I speak to Groenewegen – recovering at home from a crash at April’s Scheldeprijs – he confirms the lyric quickly started to grate. “First my son called me Daddy, then he heard the song and he started calling me Dylan Dylan Dylan Dylan Groenewegen all the time,” he says, smiling as he mimics his son’s head-bopping refrain. “It was not the best song, but it goes quite crazy,” he concedes.
Groenewegen probably wouldn’t have believed it at the time, but seven years on he is now employed by the video’s creator. Moreover, he is the star sprinter of a team co-founded by three YouTuber friends, and will lead their Grand Tour debut at this month’s Giro d’Italia, where they have a genuine shot at winning a stage.
When the sprinter announced last August that he was joining the Rockets, some thought it must be a joke; why would a WorldTour rider – a man whose 81 career wins are surpassed among current peers only by Primož Roglič and Tadej Pogačar – drop down to a second-tier ProTeam? “It was time for something new,” Groenewegen says. “[This team] do it a little bit differently on the media side, but that’s what I like: new motivation, seeing things a bit differently.”
The change of scenery, it’s clear, has paid off. In March, Groenewegen won three races in five days – surpassing his entire season haul last year with Jayco AlUla – including the Rockets’ first WorldTour scalp at the Ronde van Brugge. Perhaps just as impressive was the fact the team uploaded an 18-minute behind-the-scenes documentary of that win to YouTube just hours after the finish. It’s the sort of content Groenewegen’s five-year-old son Mayson loves, and which is building the team’s popularity as much as the wins themselves.
Doing numbers
The Unibet Rose Rockets recently claimed a major bragging right: they overtook Visma-Lease a Bike for YouTube subscribers. Here’s their content operation in numbers:
20 – members of staff employed in content, including in-house photographers, short- and long-form video creators. (The entire team counts 100 people, of which 30 riders.)
310,000 – YouTube subscribers across the Tour de Tietema and Unibet Rose Rockets channels
63 million – views across the two YouTube channels
210,000 – Instagram followers
“At my son’s school, the young kids watch the videos on YouTube,” Groenewegen says. “What I like about this team is that they’re trying to get young people into the sport. That’s what the sport needs, and they’re doing it in a good way.”
In just three and a half years, the Rockets have risen from third-tier obscurity to big-time prominence – breaking through in their own, inimitable way. A pro team emerging from a YouTube channel is unconventional enough – let alone one run by three influencers turned first-time team owners in their early 30s. Even the genesis of their name is unusual: a team DS likened their first-year bikes to a Rocket ice lolly, and it stuck. They certainly break the mould, then, but do they prove that another way is possible? Can you really run a team on passion and the power of video content? To answer these questions, we have to go back to the beginning. The story starts with three friends, a silver van and a video camera.
“I had this idea of making challenges during the Tour de France,” Tietema says. A former pro cyclist, the Dutchman’s most famous result came on his one appearance at Paris-Roubaix, in 2022, where he finished last, over an hour behind the winner. “When I zoom out now, I don’t think I was made for a professional career,” the 31-year-old says. “I’m too much of an entrepreneur, someone who gets energy from doing a lot of different stuff.”
It’s that drive that took him, aged 24 and with no accreditation, to the 2019 Tour. Starting a team was not yet even a germ of an idea in his mind; he simply had a list of 20 fun filming challenges for him and his two friends – from dressing up as riders, to handing out pizzas on the Champs-Élysées, to making a song for a stage winner. The trio’s budget for the three weeks was €10,000, an amount he now describes as “not enough to be comfortable”.
“We worked at McDonald’s and we slept in tents. But we managed it, and [the resulting videos] blew up quite significantly,” Tietema explains.
Tens of thousands watched those first Tour de Tietema videos, and come year two the audience ballooned again. With it came a more ambitious idea: launching a cycling team. “I was pretty serious by then,” Tietema says. Several big brands including Garmin and Škoda were already on board as sponsors of the YouTube channel. “I didn’t fully understand what it meant to run a cycling team, but from a wider perspective, I saw a lot of potential and value in creating a team with a proper storyline.” From the outset, it was entertainment – as much as racing – that would shape the project.
Tomáš Kopecký on content duties at the Giro d’Italia presentation.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Tour de Tietema-Unibet, a 12-rider Continental squad, launched at the start of 2023. The ultimate ambition was simple: take the team to the Tour de France and go from cartoonish pizza deliverymen to serious competitors on the Champs-Élysées. One of the first riders Tietema signed was amateur Tomáš Kopecký, who is still on the squad today and will make his Grand Tour debut at this month’s Giro. “I remember my dad being really sceptical,” Kopecký says of the initial contract discussions. “They didn’t have anything, they just had plans. I asked about a race programme and bikes, and they didn’t have any of that.”
Despite his scepticism, Kopecký saw something in the project. The success of the YouTube videos had created momentum, and although he had already signed for another team, he was drawn to the attention-grabbing, fan-first model. He went back to his father, who lent him the money to buy out the other contract. “My dad said, ‘Just do it. It’s your feeling and your gut that has to tell you the right thing.’”
His impulse proved right: the 26-year-old is now a pro rider – the team having gained ProTeam status in 2024 – meaning he now travels in a fully equipped team bus and takes part in WorldTour races. Consequently, the team’s budget is now multiples of the €10,000 with which Tietema funded his first Tour adventure. “It costs millions to run a pro cycling team nowadays,” Tietema says. How many millions? “It’s a bit like Bitcoin, it’s growing really fast,” he lets out a shy laugh. “In terms of making profit, maybe it would have been a better idea to just keep the YouTube channel.”
Three, two, one… takeoff!
(Image credit: Getty Images)
- July 2019: Tour de Tietema YouTube channel launches with daily challenge videos at the Tour de France
- January 2023: YouTubers Bas Tietema, Josse Wester and Devin van der Wiel found 12-rider cycling team as Tour de Tietema-Unibet
- September 2023: Team rides Tour of Britain, wins combativity award
- January 2024: Team steps up from third-tier Continental to second-tier ProTour in only second season
- April 2024: WorldTour event debut at Amstel Gold Race
- January 2025: Team changes name to Rockets to form a clearer identity, swaps from a Dutch to French UCI licence with a Tour de France wild card in mind
- April 2025: Monument debut at Paris-Roubaix
- March 2026: First WorldTour victory through Dylan Groenewegen at the Ronde van Brugge
- May 2026: Grand Tour debut at the Giro d’Italia
Financial pressures aside, Tietema has no regrets about starting a team. Eyeing a Grand Tour debut this season, he and his co-owners Wester and Van der Wiel peppered their 30-rider squad with WorldTour talent. Alongside Groenewegen, a six-time Tour stage winner, is his lead-out man Elmar Reinders, and former Team Sky climber Wout Poels, whose 25 Grand Tour starts make him one of the most experienced heads in the peloton. Their coaching staff has also been bolstered by the appointment of retired sprinting superstar Marcel Kittel, winner of 14 Tour stages.
Their inclusion in this year’s Giro is a landmark moment for the Rockets, but they will not be at the Tour de France. “I think we were on the edge of participating,” says Tietema, confirming talks took place with Tour organiser ASO about a wildcard for July. The final spot instead went to the established Spanish team Caja Rural-Seguros RGA. “That was a bummer,” he adds.
Only ASO knows the reasoning. Perhaps the Rockets were not taken seriously enough – after all, the team’s owners were performing pizza japes at the race only last year. More likely, their shortage of WorldTour wins (just one so far) counted against them, despite the fact that, as Tietema puts it, organisers increasingly “really see the value […] of producing media content and bringing other people to the sport”.
Tietema regards the Giro as “the perfect step up for us”. Stage one features a flat finish along the seafront in Burgas – a prime opportunity for Groenewegen. The team’s hope, of course, is not only to take their first Grand Tour stage win but to turn it into compelling content. The race’s eight flat stages provide plentiful opportunities for Groenewegen to make a splash in his starring role. “For sure we’ll go for that first day,” he smiles. “You can get the pink jersey, so let’s try, eh?”
If he manages it, will he play Tietema’s techno song on the bus? “You’ll need to ask the boys that one,” Groenewegen chuckles. “The last time they did it was after [I won March’s Grote prijs Jean-Pierre] Monseré. I came back to the bus and my son was already there dancing. Everybody was screaming and yelling. That’s also nice about this team: we celebrate a little longer than usual.”
Gone now are the days of dancing on hay bales to garner attention. Ahead of his team’s first Grand Tour, Tietema is trying to keep his feet on the ground. He knows it will take something “really exceptional” for the Rockets to win a stage – no ProTeam has won at the Giro since Polti-VisitMalta’s Davide Bais in 2023 – but it won’t stop him believing. The team haven’t kept to the script so far, and they aren’t about to start.
“I still see us as the underdogs,” Tietema says. “[In football terms] we’re still that regional team that competes against Liverpool, Barcelona, Chelsea. But it’s sport, and I think if you play it smart, and have a good team spirit, you can keep up with the best.”
Raising the stakes yet higher, if the Rockets finish as one of the top-three-ranked ProTeams this year, they’ll receive an automatic invitation to all three Grand Tours next season. The Tour de France dream could come true as soon as next July. Just how far could they go? “[We want to] become the team with the biggest fanbase in cycling,” Tietema replies, unflinching. Anyone who finds this answer surprising hasn’t been paying attention. “It’s why we exist,” he adds. “We want to be a team for the fans.”
Cycling is not a popularity contest, but if it were, the Rockets would already be leading the way.
Rockets squad for the Giro
Lukáš Kubiš is the national champion of Slovakia.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Dylan Groenewegen (Ned, 31)
Elmar Reinders (Ned, 34)
Wout Poels (Ned, 38)
Tomáš Kopecký* (Cze, 26)
Hartthijs de Vries* (Ned, 29)
Lukáš Kubiš* (Svk, 26)
Niklas Larsen* (Den, 29)
Matyáš Kopecký* (Cze, 23)
* = Grand Tour debutant
