The real winners of Heated Rivalry mania: Your fave indie brands
How a gay sports romance broke the internet and sent fans scrambling for books, candles, and hockey swag.
If you told me 2026 mainstream cultural discourse would be consumed by a Canadian-made gay hockey romance TV series, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Yet here we are.
Heated Rivalry—based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers book series—premiered in November 2025 and immediately became a cultural phenomenon. If your algorithm hasn’t been serving you this 👇 for the past two months, what were you even doing?
You cannot escape the hype (especially if you’re my live-in boyfriend who knows the entire script by heart without actually having watched it).
On HBO Max, the series nearly doubled its viewership after the finale aired on December 26th. With a total of 10.6 million viewers, it’s become the network’s top acquired scripted series to date. Its stars have been thrust into fame, onto magazine covers, and into the hot seat across from the biggest late night talk hosts.
While the winners here, on the surface, appear to be Canadian media and LGBTQ storytelling in the mainstream, the impact of the series has been wide-reaching, touching unexpected beneficiaries: Straight women. The NHL. A popular Montreal bagel chain. An entire literary genre.
Olympic organizers realized the opportunity immediately: the show’s leads, Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, carried the flame in Italy. But it didn’t just give the pre-event ceremonies a relevant viral moment. The “Heated Rivalry effect” is drawing new fans to the Olympic games and the sport of hockey. Turns out all the sport needed was a little sexual tension.
It’s the kind of cultural penetration usually reserved for Beyoncé tours or the latest Star Wars film. Except this time, the medalists aren’t major studios or multinational corporations—they’re your local sports league and businesses run by teams of five.
Heated Rivalry created an entire economy around itself, sending fans scrambling to niche indie bookstores, hockey games, and merch shops faster than you can say, “I’m coming to the cottage.”
The “I told you so” moment
Serena Goodchild and Kearston Bergeron loved the stories of Ilya Romanov and Shane Hollander long before the books’ protagonists skated from page to screen. The sisters run Hopeless Romantic Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Toronto dedicated to the romance genre.
Just before the show premiered, the store hosted an event with author Rachel Reid and the show’s leads. “We sold out of 300 tickets for the event,” Serena says. “While at the time it seemed very hectic and busy, looking back now, there is no way we would have been able to have such an intimate event after the show’s release and surge in popularity.”
The demand hasn’t stopped. “Heated Rivalry was our biggest seller of 2025,” Serena notes—and the show only premiered in late November. “We are constantly sold out of Rachel Reid books and still have weekly emails asking if we have any signed copies left.”
Like the informal office romantasy cult book club wearing me down with spicy recommendations, Serena and Kearston’s mission is to change public opinion about romance and recruit more people to the genre. They’ve built their whole livelihood around it.
“While some people may still imagine a romance novel as some sort of cliché story with a Fabio-esque pirate shirt-wearing man on the cover, this isn’t always the case,” says Serena. “Romance can come in so many different sub-genres so there really is a story for everyone.”
Kearston recommended a few that I, a literary fiction snob, might even enjoy.
Heated Rivalry’s success has helped dispel some of the myths. “We’ve noticed some more foot traffic from people now willing to give the genre a try,” Serena says.
And as for the hottest new story, Serena and Kearston have made space for loyal customers and new converts alike to connect: Heated Rivalry-themed craft-alongs, tattoo pop-ups, and paint nights still dominate the shop’s busy event calendar through February.
Okay but actually look at these numbers
Kate Glass and her team at Briarwick Candles had been fans of Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series since 2020. The brand collabed with the author to launch official Shane and Ilya candles in January 2023 long before the TV adaptation, long before the rest of us contracted “Hollanov” fever.
They had no idea what was coming (spoiler: a 2,000% spike in sales).
“At the time, fans of the books LOVED the scents but they weren’t very popular despite us telling everyone who would listen that they need to read these books,” says Rhianna Wicken, marketing director at Briarwick. Then November 2025 happened. Everyone was finally listening.
“Since then, our original Shane and Ilya candles have had an uptick of over 2,000% in sales compared to the previous 30 months,” Rhianna says.
The ripple effects go beyond Heated Rivalry, sending new customers to seek out Briarwick’s other queer romance collaborations. Collections based on Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material and C.S. Pacat’s Captive Prince have experienced the fringe benefits of the craze. “It speaks to the market’s desire for queer love stories and merchandise to celebrate these fandoms,” Rhianna says.
It’s reflected in the data too: Briarwick’s overall email subscriptions jumped 11% after the series launched.
For a team of five people hand-pouring every candle in their warehouse studio, the surge in popularity has been overwhelming in a good way. “It’s been beyond what we could’ve imagined.”
Official collabs are finally catching up to the hype
Meanwhile, back in Canada Vigyl founder Stephen Michlits is kicking himself. “I wish that I would have, back in November, immediately started developing candles,” he says. “I reached out to people in the industry to find out about the licensing.”
His “queer-led scent and design studio” and Montreal-made products struck me as the perfect partner for a candle collab north of the border. With most cultural crazes, Stephen would probably be too late. But while my algo is still rocking an 80% Heated Rivalry to 20% dog ratio, something tells me this time is different.
In fact, the latest brand to catch the Heated Rivalry tailwind hasn’t even launched its products yet. Anticipation is high for Canadian heritage brand Province of Canada’s offering: an official collaboration to bring The Fleece to life.
Your sweater is about to become a signal to other fans: we have to talk.
If the fan response to unofficial merch is any indication, Province of Canada is about to have a very good quarter. After all, even as the masses inevitably move on to the next shiny thing, season two will drop, opening more opportunities for brands like Vigyl to get in on the action. Bell Media, I hope you’re listening!
The actual business lesson hiding in all this chaos
Heated Rivalry demonstrates something powerful about modern commerce: when you build real community around what you love, the economics follow. Hopeless Romantic Books still caters to its die hard romance reader audience and Briarwick stayed true to book-accurate scent notes, while others may have simply chased the money.
These businesses served their communities authentically. When the cultural moment arrived, they were already there, ready, with the exact products their newly expanded audiences wanted.
When culture shifts this fast, the winners are rarely the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They’re the ones who were hand-pouring candles at 2am, hosting book events for 30 people, and believing in the magic before anyone else did.