Execs Talk Why “Heated Rivalry” Hit So Big

Produced for Canada’s Crave streaming service, the gay hockey romance drama “Heated Rivalry” became an unexpected critical and commerical sensation – turning into a massive hit for not just Crave but HBO Max in the US and other countries.

It spurred enough book sales to seemingly impact News Corp’s literary division (up 6%), sign-ups for streaming services like Crave, and even increased NHL game ticket sales as well as turning its stars Hudson Williams, Connor Storrie and Francois Arnaud into social media stars.

Justin Stockman, the content development VP at Bell Media which owns Crave, recently sat down with several other senior scripted programming executives for a panel at NATPE (via Deadline) to try and figure out why this show became such a breakout hit.

Stockman says part of it was that the original pitch for the series pretty much survived intact with minimal studio/streamer interference saying “[We were] focused on not watering down the creative”.

He added there was never thoughts like “‘Let’s introduce a lot of straight characters and we’ll round this out.’ No, like, just let it be what it’s gonna be. And if you really let it be the best version of that thing as supposed to be, then people will find their entry point because it’ll be more relatable because it feels more real.”

ABC Entertainment comedy chief Suzanna Makkos says the pace is part of it: “I really appreciated that it was like very fast. It’s like, ‘We’re at the Olympics. Now we’re in the trophy thing.’ I do think that faster-paced, the audience wants that. You don’t need long scenes of them ramping up.”

Then of course there’s the steaminess with the series having a sex scene within the first seven minutes, Stockman saying: “A lot of shows wouldn’t have done that… this is a spicy show. People are gonna talk about it because there’s sex” though adds that the TV series is ‘super-sanitized’ compared to the books.

He adds: “There’s a huge audience for it, and it’s been dismissed as smut. But people like smut. And there’s a way to elevate it and make it into a show that will have more appeal.”

Robert Schildhouse, president of BritBox, says it is ultimately about audience engagement: “We see almost no correlation between budget and audience consumption and engagement. And we see incredible engagement on shows that cost very little.”