Heated Rivalry, the HBO TV adaptation of the second book in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, rounded out 2025 as a surprise, word-of-mouth success. It captures the relationship between Shane (Hudson Williams) and Ilya (Connor Storrie), two professional male hockey players, over the course of almost a decade. Along the way the pair negotiate their feelings for each other against the backdrop of internal conflict, homophobia and a manufactured public-facing rivalry.
Heated Rivalry’s unexpected success has helped it to become discussed in mainstream media, including US talk shows and sports podcasts, and has earned it a much-anticipated release in the UK (via Sky and Now TV).
Heated Rivalry is not the first gay male love story to see critical success on TV in recent years. Though other successes (including the Netflix Originals Heartstopper and Young Royals) have been less explicit and tended to be aimed at younger audiences. What is particularly unique about Heated Rivalry’s story, however, is its setting within the popular but hyper-masculine space of a men’s professional sporting league.
My PhD research focuses on the experience of football fandom in the face of oppressive and difficult conditions. The project is a passion of mine, and I adore the chance I get to speak with supporters from all backgrounds. However, despite loving football (soccer) to my bones, I – like many other queer sports fans – often feel that the experiences of sports fandom can be unrepresentative of my own community.
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Despite much stronger LGBTQ+ representation across women’s sports, male professional leagues still frequently remain dogged by homophobia, both in the stands and the changing rooms. As a result, in the imaginaries of fans – the way that fans interpret their role and experiences in the complex social, economic and cultural life of sport – queer fans can so frequently feel “othered” (actively treated as alien to a social group).
Social imaginaries are a shared (sometimes unconscious) set of beliefs, values and symbols that help a community to understand itself in the world. They often form the basis of laws or institutions. Critical research, including my own, uses imaginaries of how people understand their place in the modern economy to analyse people navigating the complexities of modern economic life.
These imaginaries are important – they help researchers make sense of how fans understand who sport is for and why they may feel this way. The manner in which people see their own place in their world tells us just as much as an analysis of the systems of capital, social relations and prejudice they are experiencing.
Gay and bisexual players in these leagues certainly exist. German footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger, for example, made his sexuality public following his retirement. Moreover, in 2020, an anonymous gay Premier League player penned a public letter explaining his hesitancy to share his sexuality, describing his day-to-day existence as an “absolute nightmare”.
These experiences, and the lack of subsequent representation within professional male sporting spaces, can frequently lead to fans feeling excluded from this arena of social life. The lack of openly gay players may be both caused and exacerbated by the prejudice experienced by supporters, with one 2018 study of football supporters finding that 63% of LGBTQ+ fans experienced homophobia and transphobia at games.
The cultural success of Heated Rivalry helps demonstrate it is not that people from LGBTQ+ communities are naturally averse to wanting to participate in these spaces. There is something incredibly important about a story so confident in its masculinity, so assured of its legitimacy as a sports romance story, taking off in the way that this adaptation has.
Hudson Williams, one of Heated Rivalry’s lead actors, has revealed that he has been contacted by closeted male professional players from different sports following the show’s release. The significance of such an impact is not to be understated. Emboldening LGBTQ+ professionals to feel represented will be good for male sports, players and fans.
Already renewed for a second season, which will cover Reid’s follow-up book, The Long Game, Heated Rivalry demonstrates that the imaginaries of queer fans in male sports can be changed.
Leagues and clubs have an imperative to ensure that the work of real cultural change is undertaken to begin this process, learning from the success of the show.
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Joe Sheldon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
