The Heated Rivalry series became a surprise hit in the United States

Stateside and in Canada, the biggest surprise hit series of the end of the year has become the story about the romance of two male ice hockey players Heated Rivalry.

The popularity of the series has been so great that in recent weeks it has been discussed in almost all the biggest American publications following the world of entertainment, such as The Hollywood Reporterissa, In Variety and Rolling Stonessa. A big story about the popularity of the series was published before Christmas The New York Times.

There is a reason: in the United States, the series has been on the list of the most watched programs of HBO Max, which presents it, since its release at the end of November.

According to the streaming service’s own statistics, based on its viewership, it is in the top five on the list of new series in 2025. It has also brought HBO Max the second highest number of viewers using the service for the first time. Only It – Welcome to Derry is ahead of it.

Made in Canada, the series is shown in its home country on the Crave streaming service, which is the most watched series in its history Heated Rivalry has already risen.

On social media, clips from the episodes of the series have collected huge numbers of views.

Heated Rivalryn the success story is fascinating because everything has happened with extraordinary speed. The creators of the series told Variety that Heated Rivalryn was originally supposed to be published only next year, but its publication was brought forward several times.

Creators – especially the creator of the series Jacob Tierney and main stars Hudson Williams mixed Connor Storrie – have told in several interviews how confusing and exhausting the series’ huge popularity has been for them. None of them had expected this.

Only three weeks before the release date of the first episode Heated Rivalrylla had no US distributor at all. Then HBO Max bought the rights to show it. CEO of HBO Casey Bloys told Variety that he was confused that no one else had picked up the series before then.

So far, in addition to the United States and Canada, the series has only acquired the rights to Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines and Spain. There have been hints about the rights to show in other countries, but no definite release dates have been announced, so there is currently no information on a possible release date for the series in Finland.

Only a couple of weeks after the release of the first episodes of the series, it was already announced that the series will continue with a second production season. The final episode of the first season aired in the US and Canada on December 26.

A large part much of the attention the series has garnered has focused on its extraordinary subject matter: the gay relationship between two hockey players.

As Finns well know, homosexuality has been a taboo in hockey circles. Of the deceased Janne from Puhaka in 2019, became the first ice hockey player who played in the SM league, who dared to say publicly that he was homosexual under his own name. Puhakka spoke on the subject for the first time For Helsingin Sanomat.

New York City Pride Hockey Alliance board member interviewed by The New York Times Joey Marcacci tells Heated Rivalryn deftly deals with a topic that many LGBT hockey fans struggle with: how to love a sport whose culture is still very toxic towards LGBT people.

The NHL, the world’s biggest hockey league, still doesn’t have a single openly gay player.

Fiction offers an opportunity to deal with the subject. Heated Rivalryssa the main characters are Shane Hollander (Williams) and Ilja Rozanov (Storrie), who play on imaginary rival hockey teams, and who drift into a relationship.

The series is based on by Rachel Reid to write Game Changers – book series that had started into a significant literary phenomenon. The New York Times wrote of romantic literature set in the hockey world as a separate phenomenon already in the summer of 2023.

Heated Rivalryssa the seen sex scenes are, according to the stories written about the series, very detailed and bold, but the series has been praised in critics for how modern and successful it tells about gay relationships in sports circles.

For example, HBO’s Bloys said in an interview with Variety that he was also particularly surprised by how broad the series’ target audience has turned out to be. In advance, he had assumed that the series might be of interest mainly to gay men, but a large part of the viewers of the series consists of women.

In its article, The Hollywood Reporter discusses in particular how interested female viewers have been in the erotic series about the relationship between two male athletes, and how the interest in eroticism between fictional male characters goes back decades.

Reid, the author of the books, believes that many women are interested in his works precisely because they cannot relate to them themselves.

“A lot of my female readers don’t want female characters in their books because of their own, often unpleasant, experiences with sex with men. They prefer to immerse themselves in a fantasy world where there’s no one they can directly relate to. They don’t want to place themselves in sex scenes. It feels safer,” Reid tells The Hollywood Reporter.