Few book-to-series adaptations have united people faster than the hockey rivalry turned star-crossed romance, Heated Rivalry, whose predominantly straight female fanbase has sparked debates over ethical consumption, true masculinity and the erasure of sapphic media.
In November of 2025, Crave released the Canadian sports romance Heated Rivalry, based on the six-book Game Changer series written by Rachel Reid. The show follows the story of two professional hockey players, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozonov, turned lovers. This book series had already gained a significant following on TikTok, or also known as BookTok, before the release of the show. When the show was released, fans noticed something peculiar, that many ‘new’ fans consisted of straight women. It can be argued that this newfound fanbase is beneficial, given that any exposure is good exposure in this context, and it is indisputable that this show has done wonders for the LGBTQ+ community by raising awareness toward the deeply ingrained homophobia in professional sports, but that’s not the issue.
This series embodies the classic enemies-to-lovers trope; the duality of public tension and sexually charged private intimacy dovetails perfectly with the avoidance of any emotional vulnerability we can see in both Shane and Ilya. These two men, both excelling in their careers on such a brutally public platform that pits them against each other, creates an ongoing theme of repressed emotion that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat. This is where we see the predominantly female viewership.
For many straight female audiences, the relationship between Ilya and Shane creates a sense of ‘safe’ masculinity by providing an environment that doesn’t allow any risk of misogyny directed at women, simply because there are no women. The emotional intensity of this series, which makes it so enjoyable, is not conducted at the expense of female vulnerability.
This raises a broader question:
, why is male gay romance so popular among straight women, and is it possibly a contributing factor to the erasure of sapphic relationships in Popular media? There are two varying narratives; the first is that this representation is empowering; the second is that this collective response is possibly fetishizing.
Heated Rivalry is a refreshing disruption from traditional heterosexual love stories, exploring masculinity in ways rarely tackled in popular media. And most importantly, it does normalize queer love and creates an inclusive environment. Many also argue that this viewership is fetishizing, as many straight women have posted about loving ‘gay porn’ in reference to heated rivalry, gay men become strictly objects of fantasy and desire for them.
In these discussions, queerness is aestheticized without taking into consideration the real-life consequences of the portrayed relationship, which is a large objective of the series. When looking at the level of attractiveness or sexual appeal of the relationship between Shane and Ilya, the level of trauma and homophobia that is clearly represented in the show and the books is diminished or ignored altogether.
However, one issue cannot be ignored, and that is the sidelining of queer women in a community intended to represent everybody. The question remains, why is gay romance so massively popular in straight female spaces, while sapphic romance doesn’t receive the same mainstream obsession, and quite frankly, any popularity at all outsides of queer female spaces.
While this is a nuanced issue, it can be said that straight women may project onto male characters more easily in romance without confronting their own vulnerabilities, as discussed earlier. Lesbian relationships don’t allow straight women to insert themselves in the same indirect way, considering they are not attracted to women, there is no appeal.
A more confrontational approach would be to argue that the entertainment industry is by no means immune to patriarchal values and that, in the realm of queer fantasy, the focus remains on the men. And finally, the publishers will always promote gay male romance more heavily because, as has been discussed, it sells.
Contributed Photo/Heated Rivalry Book
