Courtesy of Crave
The television series “Heated Rivalry,” distributed by Canadian streaming service Crave, has been a massive success since its release in late 2025. Adapted from the book series “Game Changers” by Rachel Reid, the show follows a developing romance between male hockey players, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. It quickly gained a large following, leading to a 400% increase in viewership for Crave since the series debut. It has also been successful on HBO Max, which acquired rights for a U.S. release, consistently ranking amongst the most-watched series on the platform.
The show’s popularity and emphasis on the characters’ sexuality has triggered discussion across athletic circles on whether it could have a tangible impact on both the visibility and reception of LGBTQ+ professional athletes. Unfortunately, I believe that despite being a cultural phenomenon, its potential to change how the sporting world handles representation is limited.
Professional sports has long been an unwelcoming environment for LGBTQ+ athletes. According to The New York Times, as of Feb. 4, there are currently no active openly gay players in any of the four major men’s professional sports leagues. When players do come out, it is most commonly after retirement. The mistreatment of LGBTQ+ athletes also extends to non-professional sports — a 2021 survey run by The Conversation found that while 36% of heterosexual adults surveyed reported experiencing mistreatment in the context of sports, such as bullying or insults by teammates, 50% of LGBTQ+ adults reported the same.
Although there have been active gay players in the past, such as the NBA player Jason Collins, whose coming out in 2013 received many positive reactions from the league and the public, they have been limited in number and few players have followed in their footsteps. Unfortunately for “Heated Rivalry,” heteronormativity is too fundamental to locker room culture for a television series to uproot.
Although it cannot be denied that the show has had some positive impact, with former hockey player Jesse Korteum citing “Heated Rivalry” as inspiration for him coming out, I believe that any impact will be fairly minor. Homophobia and toxic masculinity are far too prevalent in men’s sports for a single show to challenge it and change the culture. Beyond instances of public-facing homophobia, such as NBA player Anthony Edwards being fined for using derogatory language toward gay people in 2022, homophobia is ingrained into the private spaces of men’s sports leagues, making it difficult for players to come out. When discussing what he believed the show failed to represent, Zach Sullivan, a professional British hockey player who is openly bisexual, mentioned some of the struggles he has faced in the past.
“I am in utter disbelief of the disparity between how professional ice hockey is, in real life, versus how it is portrayed in the show … (The show does not portray) the effort that you go to, to keep your sexuality a secret — the coping mechanisms, the extra effort to ‘fit in’ — to be ‘one of the boys’, the coverups, the non stop lies, the bags under your eyes at every practice due to lack of sleep, the stress and strain on personal relationships and friendships, the sheer exhaustion of ‘acting straight’ so you’d never be ‘found out,’” Sullivan wrote in an Instagram post on Jan. 18.
This social environment cannot be easily resolved by the success of “Heated Rivalry.” Male sports leagues serve as an environment that reinforces hegemonic masculinity — athletes are held as the ideal of what it means to be a man, and with that baggage comes heteronormativity. Athletes are viewed as strong and dominant — the masculine ideal — and any deviation from that is seen as weakness. This leaves LGBTQ+ players very limited in their expression. As long as that attitude persists, it will be difficult for athletes to feel safe coming out.
There is also no reason to assume that LGBTQ+ athletes outside of gay or bisexual men will benefit from the show’s representation. “Heated Rivalry” is not focused on queerness in women’s sports or the struggle that transgender individuals face in sports. Lacking representation in this regard is not a moral failure, representing those ideas are just simply not what the show’s producers are interested in. However, because of this, I find it difficult to conceive of “Heated Rivalry” as a grand challenge to how LGBTQ+ representation has been handled across sports as a whole. Its perspective is too specific for that to be the case.
In spite of its limited impact on the sports world, I believe that the show’s popularity will open the door for more discussion of LGBTQ+ representations in sports, especially with the release of its second season, expected to come out in spring of 2027.
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