IF YOU’VE BEEN paying attention over the past few weeks, you may be aware of Heated Rivalry, the show that seems to be everywhere right now. 

The show, based on a book series, landed on Canadian streaming service Crave back in November and was quickly picked up and shown in other countries based on the initial buzz. The story centres on two young professional hockey players: Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Russian Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), who have a decade-long relationship.

Though it initially made headlines for its sex scenes, there is a lot more to the show than the spice on the surface. As the show unfurls, the two young athletes spend the years slowly becoming comfortable with each other and their sexualities.

As well as huge viewing figures, the show is already having a real-world impact: Three Heated Rivalry club nights scheduled for Dublin in March sold out last week within a day.

Algorithms have been filled with fans analysing the show, an Ottawa hockey team started selling Hollander and Rozanov jerseys, and even former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has praised the show. 

While some commentary has focused on the sex in the show, many viewers have become enthralled with the love story it tells and the nuanced social commentary it has to offer on what it means to be LGBTQ+ in sport. 

But what is behind this small-budget show’s cultural domination? 

From small streamer to cultural phenomenon

The streaming service where the show first aired has been described as the ‘Canadian Netflix’, but while Netflix is a global streamer with hundreds of millions of subscribers, Crave reported 4.3 million subscribers in the autumn of 2025. 

Shot in just 36 days, the show’s creator Jacob Tierney has been open in interviews about its shoestring budget. Its breakout stars, Williams and Storrie, had both been working as waiters less than a year ago. 

In other words, it’s safe to say that Heated Rivalry and its stars were not expecting this level of success. 

Host of the For Tech’s Sake podcast Elaine Burke has observed the phenomenon that the show has become and sees its unusual rise as very organic: “It was people driving it for me. It wasn’t brands jumping on the trend, it was people recommending it.”

“If you were coming at it based on the coverage out there, you might be expecting it to be just like pure sexuality [but] there’s a lot more to it.”

Burke noted the joy the show has brought to viewers at a time when the world feels quite dark: “We need that bit of lightness. I think people are looking for a little moment of fun and collective community around that.”

“I just want some chaos. Controlled chaos, not the chaos that’s in the news – some kind of wild escapism.”  

The show has been particularly popular with women, something which its stars Williams and Storrie have attributed to the “safety” women often find in queer storytelling. 

Burke said that although the sex scenes are “glossy and sexy and TV-worthy”, Heated Rivalry has also captured the very universal “stop-start nature of sex” and the “consent conversations that don’t feel awkward and actually feel kind of real”.

Step into the sunshine

Much of the conflict between the show’s two leads centres around the pressure and anxiety that comes from hiding their sexualities in their sporting careers.

This has received huge praise from viewers, but it has also inspired real athletes to share their own stories.

Williams said in an interview that closeted athletes, who still play professionally, have been reaching out to the people working on the show and the author of the books that the show is based on. 

Former multi-league ice hockey player Jesse Kortuem released a statement on social media this week crediting the show with inspiring him to finally come out as gay. 

As a young athlete, he said he wondered “how [he] could be gay and still play such a tough and masculine sport”.

Fans of the show on TikTok have shared how much the show would’ve meant to their younger closeted selves, starting a trend of posting old photos of themselves in various sports. 

GAA club footballer Kevin Penrose, who came out as gay in 2022, also took to social media to praise the show. 

In a viral post on Instagram, he said Heated Rivalry is more than just a show, it’s “about whether you get to exist fully in the thing you love”.

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Speaking to The Journal, Penrose said the show “really resonated” with him.

“Everything I felt growing up, I felt like ‘I’ve gone through that experience’ as I watched the show. It felt like my life, in a sense,” he said. 

Penrose described how important it was to see the storyline on the show: “Especially in the GAA, I didn’t know of anyone out there who was in the same position as me, or someone who had been through it and came out the other side.”

The anxiety around how the characters keep their sexualities secret is also something that resonated with Penrose: “There’s that fear because they love the sport that much. They love the competition, the winning – will they lose everything if their secret is found out?”

“It’s so important to be seeing yourself, especially for younger athletes”, he said. “It’s not essentially just about coming out and then your story ends – it’s showing what happens afterwards and what it’s like to stay in sport.”

“The story continues where you’re able to go back to your sport and really show up for yourself and show up for those who are still going through this transition period, figuring out who they are.”

The impact of being in the closet on Penrose’s sporting career was massive. He said if he had a role model or a show like that at the time “maybe I wouldn’t have stepped away from the sport”.

“I thought if I get out of that [sporting] environment then I would start to feel better, and maybe the feelings will go away – but as with everything else, the feelings follow you.”

It is clear that Heated Rivalry has tapped into a market that rarely sees itself depicted on TV.

While much of the news these days offers a dismal view of the world, Heated Rivalry has offered a bit of much-needed sunshine.

Penrose believes the show is “really going to help a lot of people”. “It’s a show I wish would have come out maybe ten or twelve years ago, whenever I started realising I was gay,” he said.