As soon as it turned an immediate hit, Heated Rivalry’s success might have appeared preordained. Primarily based on a preferred collection of romance novels by Rachel Reid about romances between interconnected male hockey gamers, the present debuted in November 2025 and has turn into Canadian streamer Crave’s best-performing unique present, driving extra sign-ups than anything in 2025 to the streamer (owned by Canadian media conglomerate Bell Media). It was additionally successful for worldwide companions that embrace HBO Max within the U.S., the place viewers had watched every episode greater than 10 million occasions by February 2026.
However getting the venture off the bottom was a wrestle for govt producers Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady, who produced it by way of their firm, Accent Aigu Leisure. Crave’s inexperienced gentle included some preliminary funding, however the showrunners nonetheless wanted to search out further backing, asking potential companions to take a threat on an typically explicitly sexual homosexual romance.
I spoke to Brendan Brady, govt producer of Heated Rivalry. That is the story of how Heated Rivalry went from pitch to manufacturing to world blockbuster—all in solely 18 months.
As Accent Aigu approached potential companions, most have been averse to the chance of backing the present. Finally, Bell Media elevated its funding by way of Sphere Abacus, a distribution firm through which it took a majority stake in March 2025. Brady and Tierney additionally put their producer charges into the venture.
Brady: Early July 2025, we’ve a inexperienced gentle, and we have been off to the races. What we saved developing towards was folks cherished the pitch, however in the end what we saved listening to was, “This doesn’t really feel like we will promote this within the U.S. for the cash you guys need.”
Justin Stockman, VP of world content material, Bell Media: Once we have been in search of [international] companions, everybody who would learn the remedies or scripts thought it was probably the most thrilling issues they’d ever learn, however then they might say, “No, we’re not going to be a part of it.” When it got here time for manufacturing, we have been like, let’s simply absolutely fund it and we’ll additionally distribute it as a result of it appears like there’s simply a lot enthusiasm behind this.
Sean Cohan, president, Bell Media: Buying a majority stake in Sphere Abacus in the midst of final yr was a industrial threat that has paid off fairly properly. It has bolstered our perception that if you happen to get again to green-lighting great things shortly and consider in your creatives, there’s a method by way of a few of the noise on the market throughout a tricky time within the media ecosystem.
Manufacturing befell from April to June 2025, and on-line pleasure from followers of the books helped stir curiosity from worldwide distributors, particularly on the world’s premier annual TV commerce present, MIPCOM, in Cannes.
Stockman: Even earlier than we introduced the collection at our upfront in June of 2025, superfans intercepted requests to casting brokers and discovered it was Heated Rivalry. Then after we introduced [the series], it blew up even larger. You would simply really feel the groundswell. As we bought able to take it out at MIPCOM [in September 2025], which is the place we get our world gross sales from, we initially have been going to air it across the Winter Olympics in January, however we stated, “Let’s put it on over the vacations.”
Brady: At that time, we had not one of the postproduction finished. However [MIPCOM] was really the primary place we had felt somewhat little bit of momentum. Individuals have been coming as much as us on the Croisette and being like, “Hey, you guys did that homosexual hockey present, proper?” Two weeks after MIPCOM is when HBO got here in—HBO Australia was the primary acquisition.
HBO U.S. then picked up the present, committing to air it the identical day and time it premiered on Crave each week. Response to the present was overwhelmingly optimistic, giving Crave the homegrown worldwide hit it had been concentrating on for years. Crave green-lighted a second season, set to debut in spring 2027. It’ll partially adapt the sixth guide in Reid’s collection.
Cohan: HBO Max has stated it’s the largest acquisition they’ve had since launch. We trended to No. 1 in Sky within the U.Okay. A 3rd of viewers have watched it greater than as soon as. It’s the factor that’s pushed extra sign-ups to Crave than nearly something. At this watershed second, it has opened the door to a lot of nice reveals that we hope will likely be cultural lightning rods.
