Sometime in early November, HBO and Max content chairman and chief executive officer Casey Bloys received a call from Jason Butler, an executive on his team focused on global programming. Butler had just acquired “Heated Rivalry,” a Canadian show about gay hockey players, for Australia’s HBO Max. Would you be interested in seeing this show for the US as well?
“He sent me the episode on Friday and we started negotiating on Monday,” Bloys recalls. “It was an easy and very quick yes. Obviously I’m gay so I felt this might cause a stir. I thought it was very well done. To be honest, I was surprised that it had been streamed since it was about 3 weeks before it aired. ”
In Canada, “Heated Rivalry” is currently the most-watched original series ever on Bell Media’s Crave streamer. And here in the U.S., it’s been the highest-rated non-animated series on HBO Max since it began airing in 2020, and in the top five of all scripted debuts on HBO Max this year.
So why did it suddenly appear out of nowhere? After all, it was just a little thing. “Heated Rivals” wasn’t scheduled to premiere until next year, but once Bell Media and Crave learned what the series was about, they kept pushing back the premiere date. And up.
“I think we were looking at February,” says executive producer Brendan Brady. He co-founded “Heat Rivalry” producer Accent Aig Entertainment with series creator Jacob Tierney, and wrote and directed all episodes. “And it was probably January. Then Christmas. And then…November 28th.”
Tierney and Brady were a bit taken aback by the rush to start the show. The duo just submitted the final cut of the show’s season 1 finale (episode 6 will air on December 26th) a few days ago.
“It’s great to be loved, and being loved can be very exhausting and difficult, so we just live through it,” Tierney says.
Justin Stockman, Bell Media’s vice president of content, acknowledged that “Heat Rivalry” was scheduled on short notice, and for good reason.
“Originally, it was scheduled to air in early 2026. But as I continued to watch it, I thought, ‘This is really good!'” Stockman says. “Typically, the holiday season is a very high ratings period for Crave, when people are at home and there’s not as much new TV on the air as there is on traditional TV. We thought, ‘We should air this during the holidays and really take advantage of all the attention.'” So at the last minute, we moved up the schedule. ”
This accelerated premiere has been a bit of a challenge for Sphere Abacus, Bell Media’s international distribution division. Sphere Abacus had already planned to begin shopping for “Heat Rivalry” at the Cannes-based MIPCOM TV Market in mid-October. Suddenly, the window between closing a global distribution deal and a new November 28 release date for these “heated rivalries” is narrowing.
The story behind the success of “Heat Rivalry” is one of the few feel-good stories that aired on television at a time when business could have used a little more. It all started during the COVID-19 pandemic when Tierney (whose resume includes the Canadian hits “Shoresy” and “Letterkenny”) became obsessed with reading “Game Changers,” a novel series about rival professional hockey players who form a secret romance. These books by Rachel Reid are a little racy, but they have a cult following, especially among young female readers.
Tierney wasn’t necessarily thinking about television when she was devouring Reed’s books. But then he read a Washington Post article about the current popularity of romance novels, named “Game Changers,” and told Brady they needed to get television rights.
“It was so vulgar that I never thought of choosing it before,” Tierney says. “I thought, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to get this on TV.’ But then I thought, ‘This might be a valuable IP.’ Maybe this is something that moves the needle. ” So I slid into the author’s DM. What I didn’t know was that she was Canadian and a fan of “Letterkenny.” I thought, “Would you be willing to give me your book for a reasonable amount of time and money?” And that was the beginning. ”
Crave runs “Shoresy” and “Letterkenny,” so Tierney and Brady brought their pitch there, but they were worried that the highly sexual content of “Heat Rivalry” might give Bell Media executives pause.
“We wrote the pilot on spec, and that turned out to be a mistake because we didn’t know if people[at Crave]would read the book,” Tierney says. “All the executives at Bell have read several books in this series. Everyone was very intrigued by the idea. And they were like, ‘Oh, that’s vulgar! You don’t really get that on TV these days!'”
Stockman credits Rachel Goldstein Coote, Crave’s head of development, with working with Tierney and Brady to hone the idea. “Everyone thought the script was great,” Stockman says. “Then we launched this loan to find people to co-finance with us. The response was incredible. Everyone who saw it was just amazed. But not a single person came forward to co-finance.”
In hindsight, Tierney and Brady are relieved that Crave didn’t find a co-financier who would demand changes to the show. “Rachel at Crave had an innate understanding that this book would work with this audience, and this audience is surprisingly large,” Tierney says. “And if you start doing that, you risk alienating the audience you’re used to and making a show for absolutely no one.”
Brady points out that the Canadian television model differs from the U.S. television model in that program producer Accent Eig owns the underlying programming. They partner with broadcasters (such as Crave) and pay licensing fees. This, along with tax credits, gives you a percentage of your budget. Next, the remaining funds must be found from additional partners.
But in the case of “Heat Rivalry,” all potential partners wanted to play around with the creative, Brady says.
“We have been in discussions with other additional financiers who do not meet Jacob’s vision for this show,” Brady says. “They wanted to change the original IP. What if the entrance was different? What if they added all the additional characters?”
None of it made sense, creatively or financially. Fortunately, they were able to pay for the show themselves because of the Bell license and its distribution agreement, as well as Accent Aig putting some of its own capital into the project.
Stockman doesn’t think the “spicy” nature of the “heated rivalry” has prevented him from finding additional financial partners. Rather, he blames it on the industry’s difficult times. “It was a very happy coincidence that we were actually able to fund it all,” Stockman said. “We were so proud of the creatives when we saw the edits coming in. It went from feeling like a risk to feeling like we’ve got something huge here.”
And now, having achieved success, they do not need such a partner. As for HBO Max, which came on board too late as a producer and co-financer for Season 1, the company still has no involvement or say in the creative for Season 2, which was announced on December 12th. And Mr. Bloys accepts that. “We’re not going to get involved,” he says. “I think the last thing the show needs is people interfering with what works. So I don’t think I need to give an opinion. Obviously, they have a good understanding of the show and what works. I’m looking forward to receiving the episodes and highlighting them on HBO Max.”
Bloys declined to say how much HBO ended up paying for the U.S. rights to “Heated Rivals,” but it doesn’t appear to be anything extravagant. “The other thing that really impressed me was that this was a very logical acquisition,” he says. “I don’t know their budget, but I’m very impressed with what they’ve done based on acquisition costs. This is not a huge budget that we’re looking at.”
Tierney said he is excited that the show will be aired on HBO in the US. In a way, this makes sense since HBO’s productions are licensed and viewed on Crave in Canada. “We were always like, ‘Hey, we’re trying to make premium smut here,’ so now we’re doing premium smut on HBO!” he says. “That would be the dream. But we’ve been doing this so long that we’ve learned that nothing guarantees an audience anymore. There’s so much good television out there that breaking through the noise feels like such a gift.”
“Heat Rivalry” definitely broke through the noise. Bell Media executives said they noticed early interest in the TV version as casting was announced, starting with Hudson Williams and Conor Storey as the show’s central couple (Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov).
“Every step of the way we released the trailer, and we had a very smart social media strategy to feed our fan base IV, the reaction just kept getting stronger and stronger,” Stockman says.
Stockman didn’t initially expect the audience to be so female-centric, given how risqué the books can be. “I was told that the target audience for these books was women, but I didn’t know what to believe because it seemed pretty strange,” Stockman says. “But when you start looking at the internet response, before this show really declined, the majority of it was from women and female fans of the book.
“Jacob and Brendan wanted to stay true to what the fan base expected and not dilute that,” he continues. “When we started looking at the edits, we were happy that there were fairly long sex scenes and that there was a unique atmosphere, but there was a real sweetness underneath. It’s not just the sex scenes…but obviously people are going to talk about the sex scenes! Jacob said at one point, ‘We don’t need to market this to gay men. We just need to make sure that the women who love this book will like it. Gay men will find it right away.’
Here in the U.S., Bloys was no doubt surprised by the widespread success of “Heat Rivalry.” “I thought it was going to be a very specific, maybe gay-only show, but it actually has a broader audience than that,” he says. “From a business perspective, the money we spent on the acquisition was an incredible investment.”
Bloys agrees that the sex scenes are well done and plentiful, but not obscene. “I’ve been with HBO for over 20 years, and I’ve done a lot of shows with sex scenes,” he says. “I think what was interesting about them here, for people who have been closeted for some time, especially in a high-pressure situation like a professional sports team where it’s even harder to come out, on a show, is that that sex reflected a little more of that feeling of, ‘You’re never going to find this again.'” It was intense, but to me it seemed like it amplified what they were trying to do with their storytelling. That said, I’m not going to complain that they were attractive and hot. And as I said to Jacob, I would say it’s very well directed. ”
As “Heat Rivalry” grew in popularity, internet memes also boosted the show. Stockman said his favorite was before the HBO acquisition. “There was a meme about Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry dating, and someone said, ‘Oh, she’s just dating him to watch ‘Heated Rivals.” We passed it around the office a few times.”
Beyond the success of “Crave,” Stockman says the “heated rivalry” has benefited Canadian production as a whole. “I think Canada gets a bit of a bad rap as a place to come to make cheap stuff,” he says. “We have a lot of great tax credits, but we also have a lot of really great creatives who are known globally. We’ve really pushed that story forward, and now to have this show come out and be accepted globally and be produced by Canadians is amazing.”
Mr Tierney added: “This was a great thing for Crave and for Bell’s original division. Now they have a flagship hour-long drama that they can say, ‘We made this and we sold it everywhere.'” I can’t stress this enough: This was so much better than we expected. ”
Now that they’ve finally focused on season one, Tierney and Brady are turning their attention to season two. But you have to be patient. “It can’t be the same time next year, because this time last year I had five books written, and this time this year I haven’t written zero,” Tierney says. “So it’s going to be a little bit longer, but it’s still going to be quick.”
Tierney knows the demand is high and can’t wait too long to bring the show back. “We understand that everyone’s goal is to not go more than two years between seasons,” he says. “At the same time, just because this show is so popular, we’re not rushing to air a crappy season 2. But we’re very aware that our creative partners are enthusiastic and don’t want to wait too long. We’re back to work!”
