Deadline has reported that just as Pride Month begins to wrap up, comedian/actor Joel Kim Booster (Fire Island, KPop Demon Hunters) wants everyone to know that he believes it is the gay representation that drew in Heated Rivalry’s successful audience, not heavy sports focus. The most-watched acquired scripted series in HBO Max history, from Jacob Tierney (The Trotsky, Letterkenny), spawned insane amounts of competing hockey series, leaving Booster trying to confirm it was the gay characters the fans enjoyed, not the hockey.
There are now six hockey shows in development, none of them gay,” Booster said in an interview with The Provincetown Independent. “And it’s like, guys, I think it wasn’t the hockey that was the big issue.”
With none of the new hockey-themed shows revolving around LGBTQ inclusion, Booster took aim at President Trump and his administration, framing the recession of DEI initiatives as the reason for that lack of gay representation in new developments.
“People are really frightened and risk-averse right now because of this administration and what we’ve seen in the way of censorship or retaliation,” Booster said via Deadline.
Booster could be right. As of November, GLAAD’s annual “Where We Are on TV” report found nearly half of LGBTQ characters did not return on screen because of show cancellations, endings, and limited series.
In wake of Heated Rivalry, Prime Video forged an enormous marketing push for its college hockey romance series, Off Campus, as part of its young adult genre block. The series is based on the novels by Elle Kennedy (The Chase, The Play). Netflix followed suit adapting Hannah Grace’s (Holiday Ever After, Wildfire) Icebreaker books.
With the filming of Heated Rivalry’s second season expected to begin in August and the premiere slated for April 2027, whatever it is that drives the viewers, especially book superfans who are a reliable weapon against viewer drop-off, they will be expected to return en masse.