We're living in the golden age of sports romances -- just ask Heated Rivalry fans.
Rachel Reid's 2019 LGBTQ+ hockey romance was already a bestseller when it came out in 2019 -- as are the other five books in the series -- and it became a phenomenon with its recent television adaptation starring Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. And while the trend has been steadily rising for a few years now, readers are becoming increasingly obsessed with sports romances.
The free digital lending app Libby told Vanity Fair that there was a 698 percent increase in checkouts, tags and hold requests, for Heated Rivalry within 21 days of the show's first episode. The book has also seen a whopping 10,534 percent increase in activity since 2024.
Taylor Capizola, general manager of the Culver City location of romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice also told the outlet that Heated Rivalry has been a bestseller since 2019. Still, it continues to skyrocket in popularity -- and there's plenty more where that came from.
"We'll literally throw it at any single person who even vaguely mentions that they want something that's gay or something that's sports or something that's erotica," she said. "It's pretty much the first book that staff recommend."
And while Reid wrote in an essay for Maclean's that the fame has been a "weird adjustment," she also expressed that the adaptation was nothing less than "perfect."
"Not every author feels this way when their work is reworked for the screen, but for me, Heated Rivalry is a perfect adaptation," she said. "I'm a consulting producer on the show, so I was kept in the development loop the whole time. I read the scripts early and visited the set. I got to watch rough cuts of all six episodes."
"It was unlikely that this show would become a runaway hit, but I'm glad people are enjoying it so much," she continued. "I hope the success of Heated Rivalry encourages publishers to not only seek out queer romances, but to promote them far and wide."
But like other authors working in the sports romance space, Reid isn't naive about the less-savory aspects of the industry. In fact, the idea for the novel came from an "awareness of the problems within the sport's culture more broadly."
"When it came time to write my book, I thought a lot about how difficult it would be to be a closeted pro player -- and what it might be like if they came out," she added.
And at what looks like an inflection point, other romance authors -- including Lana Ferguson, the author of the friends-to-lovers hockey romance The Final Score -- are reflecting on what Heated Rivalry's success could mean for the romance genre as a whole.
"I think the popularity of this show means that it would be almost negligent to take your foot off the gas now," Ferguson told Harper's Bazaar. "There are so many marginalized voices in this industry with so many amazing stories to tell, and Heated Rivalry is proof of that."
For those shouting "put me in coach," there are dozens of sports romance stories just waiting to be discovered, centering around just about any sport you can think of. Those include Zac Hammett's See You at the Finish Line, Bal Khabra's Revolve and Chloe Liese's Everything for You, Ana Huang's The Striker and Peyton Corinne's Unsteady, just to name a few.
"Sports romances have built-in stakes that make for extremely compelling stories," added Edward Schmit, author of The Open Era, of why readers love them so much. "In rivalries, someone must win, and someone must lose -- and the characters have to share a bed and come to terms with that. And, let's be honest, sports romances make very sexy stories too."