Heated Rivalry has taken the world by a storm. The series tells the story of rivals-to-lovers hockey players Japanese-Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Russian Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), and their yearslong relationship navigating falling in love while playing professional sport.

Based on the Game Changers ice hockey romance novels by Rachel Reid, the series has garnered significant attention. The sports romance genre is experiencing a boom, and studios – and sports – are starting to take notice of these new audiences.

Can sporting bodies learn from this phenomenon to make sport more inclusive?

Sport romance stories such as Heated Rivalry depict sporting worlds where queer joy, acceptance and belonging is not only possible, but is enthusiastically embraced.

While queerness in women’s sports is relatively accepted, it isn’t in men’s sport.

In Australia, there are very few out male professional athletes, with the exceptions of the A-League Men’s Josh Cavallo and National Basketball League’s Isaac Humphries.

Former AFL player Mitch Brown recently came out as bisexual, but has acknowledged he only felt comfortable doing so after retiring.

While there are now........

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