Patrick Lefevere has confirmed his QuickStep Alpha Vinyl team has agreed to take
part in the Netflix series on the Tour de France, adding filming will begin at
the team’s service course in Belgium as early as next week.
However, the team
boss added the teams were being offered very little money for taking part,
saying Tour owners ASO would take the lion’s share of the money and leave
little for the teams.
The series is
being billed as an F1-style ‘Drive to Survive’ Netflix series based around the
teams that ride the race and featuring the Tour as the central story. It is
also set to be produced by Box to Box, the same production company that made
the seminal ‘Drive to Survive’ series.
ASO is very keen
for the project to go ahead, though it has been reported, on cyclingnews, teams
are being offered as little as €50,000 to take part.
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Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl,
Movistar, Alpecin-Fenix, AG2R Citroën, Jumbo-Visma, Alpecin-Fenix, EF Education
EasyPost and Ineos Grenadiers all appear to be in talks, at various stages,
with a view to coming on board.
But UAE Team Emirates has to date declined to
take part, even though its 23-year-old leader Tadej Pogačar has won the last
two editions of the Tour. How the series would cope with their absence remains
to be seen, though the producers would still have access to a lot of footage of
Pogačar and his team on the race.
“Other teams make different choices,” Lefevere said in Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad. “For example, UAE
Team Emirates is not participating, and I understand why. Financially,
certainly for the teams, it is peanuts.
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“ASO first passes the cash register and then, as usual,
there is little left. I have now pledged verbally, but with moderate
enthusiasm and with reservations. If the fee for the teams
doesn't go up in the future, it's not worth it.
“As a team manager I always hear the same thing, that a ‘documentary
like this is good for the sport’. I'm the last to argue with
that. Everyone knows what the Netflix series Drive to Survive has
meant for Formula 1.
“I know how it goes with documentaries like
this. Agreements are made in advance about who and what may be filmed, but
it always comes down to the same thing: you shake hands and they want an arm,”
he added.
“You can actually see that already: we commit to a
project behind the scenes during the Tour and next week – mid-March – they will
film in our service course. No idea what that has to do with the Tour.
“It is clear that as a sport we have to
provide content that goes further than the summary of the race. To
use another marketing term, it must be storytelling. The story behind the performance,
the person behind the athlete. If you remove all the friction, you're showing
something that everyone knows isn't realistic anyway.”
Lefevere appears to have taken the view this time his
team will take part in the first series, even though the money is poor, in the
hope there will be other projects in the years to come and the fees will
increase
“If not, I'll make
my own series again and it goes to the largest bidder on the market,” he said
of having the option to go his own way in time.
