Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov aren’t real-life hockey players, but the protagonists of the hit Canadian gay hockey romance might just be the NHL’s biggest draws.
Driving the news: A new analysis from ticket resale site SeatGeek suggests the runaway success of Crave’s Heated Rivalry led to a noticeable bump in ticket sales for NHL games. The company compared its sales data across three different weeks during the show’s run.
From Week 1, when the first episode aired, to Week 2, the week of the penultimate episode, the average tickets sold per NHL game on the platform jumped 24%.
What makes this noteworthy is that no such trend occurred during the same period the year prior, implying that Heated Rivalry was the contributing variable.
Why it matters: The NHL is looking to build off the momentum of seasons of near-record revenue, and, as one league rep put it to the Hollywood Reporter, Heated Rivalry is arguably “the most unique driver for creating new fans” in the league’s history.
And while all sorts of folks are enjoying Heated Rivalry, including NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, its core audience is women and the LGBTQ+ community, two groups that the NHL has tried to make inroads with (to varying degrees of success).
What’s next: NHLers return to the Olympics for the first time since 2014 next month, giving the league another chance to grow its reach. If top talent puts on a show, and more romance fans tune in, the league could bag a bounty when it renews U.S. media rights in 2028.—QH