It is set to adapt The Long Game (2022), the sixth book of the Game Changers series, which serves as a sequel to Heated Rivalry. The agreement also includes expanded distribution deals, with rights for season two secured across multiple international markets via Warner Bros. In June 2025, it was officially announced at the Bell Media Upfront that the series would be streamed on Crave. Tierney initially had doubts about whether the story could be adapted while retaining the books’ sexually explicit content.
- It also achieved strong audience viewership, becoming Crave’s most-watched original series to date and HBO Max’s top debut for an acquired, non-animated title since the platform’s launch in 2019.
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- He also wanted to find them together since «the show lives and dies on their relationship».
- However, by the release of the season finale on December 26, weekly viewership had increased more than tenfold to 324 million minutes.
‘Heated Rivalry’ Star Hudson Williams Surprises Real-Life Hockey Player Who Came Out
In its brisk, bustling six episodes, the outlines of a wider world beyond Shane and Ilya are blurry. Between the week of its debut and the week of https://www.boombetonline.nl/ its season finale, on December 27, viewership grew tenfold—from 30 million to 324 million streaming minutes logged—with a growing and notable majority of viewers being women. This November, though, a little Canadian series called Heated Rivalry figured out how to make hockey work on television.
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- On December 10, 2025, the trailer for the series was aired at the Pride Night game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
- According to data from the research group Luminate, the show debuted with 30 million streaming minutes in its first week, failing to break into the top 50 streaming programs.
- It was arguably one of the greatest places and times to be alive as a hockey fan in the United States.
- Shortly after its release, it entered IMDb’s rankings of highest-rated television episodes, attaining a rare perfect 10 out of 10 rating.
- By the end of the year, the series ranked among the best TV shows of 2025 on the lists by Cosmopolitan, the New York Post, Refinery29, The Seattle Times, and the Toronto Star.
Shortly after its release, it entered IMDb’s rankings of highest-rated television episodes, attaining a rare perfect 10 out of 10 rating. Vogue Adria and InsideHook highlighted the Empty Netters podcast, hosted by former ice hockey players, for its enthusiastic coverage of the series which they cited as an example of «non-toxic masculinity» within the sport. The series is also streaming on Sky-owned Neon in New Zealand and Movistar Plus+ in Spain.
In the terms of film theorist Linda Williams, they are both series within the realm of “body genres”—dramas built around showing the body in moments of distress and/or elation. The Pitt has nearly a dozen series regulars in the main cast, another dozen recurring characters, and many dozens more who filter in and out of the E.R. This is, I might guess, what good hockey is like. Though, for what it’s worth, the moment when that happens, when these two plotlines converge, is one of the most electrifying sequences I’ve seen on TV in the past couple of months. This episode is counterprogramming to the Ilya-Shane romance. In this stand-alone episode, we watch Scott come to terms with his own sexuality, begin secretly dating a barista named Kip, and see that relationship run up against the wall of Scott’s inability to come out.
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The series debuted on Crave with a two-episode premiere on November 28, 2025, followed by weekly episodes, with the finale airing on December 26. According to Billboard, the songs’ appearance in the series resulted in increased official on-demand streaming activity. He also told The Hollywood Reporter that, although he would direct all episodes of the second season, it is a possibility that «other writers will come in to help him out».
According to Storrie and Chang, filming of the second season is presumed to begin in the summer or fall of 2026. The conversation between Shane and Ilya in a Tampa hotel in the episode «I’ll Believe in Anything» was also filmed on the first day of production; the scene served as one of Williams and Storrie’s audition scenes. The Las Vegas sex scene in the episode «Olympians» was filmed on the first day of production. The series’ numerous sex scenes, which contributed to its notoriety and critical attention, were overseen by intimacy coordinator Chala Hunter, and the absence of frontal nudity was a decision made entirely by Tierney. De Simone says he suggested the groin stretch that Hollander does in one episode and that Williams would later demonstrated on Jimmy Fallon’s talk show.
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Although HBO Max later acquired the series, it became involved only after the first season had been completed, meaning the show was not developed as a U.S. co-production from the outset. Despite a minimal marketing campaign and a low-cost licensing fee of approximately $600,000 per episode, it experienced a rapid surge in popularity following its late-November premiere. According to data shared by Crave’s social media accounts, the show exhibited unusually high «stickiness», with a rewatch rate where approximately one-third (33%) of the total audience watched the entire season more than once. According to JustWatch, Heated Rivalry ranked fourth on its television streaming chart during the week of December 7, 2025, while Whip Media, based on data from its TV Time viewership tracking platform of more than 25 million users, reported the series placed sixth during the weeks of December 7 and 14. Following the episode’s reception, the series itself also entered IMDb Top 250 TV shows chart.
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Once you click on this new option, you will be able to select from a list of available languages to switch the language of your Reddit interface. Starting today, Android, iOS, and Desktop users will be able to access the first phase of our product translation in German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. When hockey rivals Shane and Ilya meet each other as rookies, sparks fly. “Heated Rivalry” was originally created for the Canadian streaming service Crave.
By the end of the year, the series ranked among the best TV shows of 2025 on the lists by Cosmopolitan, the New York Post, Refinery29, The Seattle Times, and the Toronto Star. Kaiya Shunyata of RogerEbert.com described the series as «revolutionary» and called it «one of the most entertaining shows of the year» as well as «the most significant queer show of the year». For their performances in the first season finale, TVLine named both Williams and Storrie as «Performers of the Week», while /Film described them as the strongest break-out performances of the year. On December 10, 2025, the trailer for the series was aired at the Pride Night game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning. In advance of the program’s television premiere, the first episode received a preview screening in Montreal at the 2025 Image+Nation festival on November 23, 2025. On November 19, 2025, nine days before the series premiere on Crave, it was announced that HBO Max had acquired US and Australian rights to the show for a day-and-date global release.
Heated Rivalry is, almost exclusively, the story of Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), two high-level professional hockey prospects who fall in love. It doesn’t feel like hockey, and it doesn’t feel like anything else on TV right now; it feels a little bit like falling in love. While it isn’t ascending to Bluey levels of global streaming dominance, what’s unique about the show has been its growth. To really appreciate what’s going on on the ice, you have to be in that big refrigerator, shoulder to shoulder with the raucous crowd, bodies flying at you left and right.
