“Heated rivalry” and the boom in gay romance stories

When the holiday season approached last year, Margaret Hecox knew exactly what her grandmother would enjoy.

The 23-year-old wrote in the card about the hit Canadian TV series “Heat Rivalry,” which depicts a secret love story between two male hockey players. Hecox watched several episodes with her grandmother and encouraged friends and other family members to watch them as well.

“I knew she would love the show,” Hecox said. “Obviously she did.”

The grandmother-granddaughter duo is part of a sizable female fanbase of books, shows, and movies that center on love stories between two men.

This type of romance content, long known as “yaoi” or “boy love” in some Asian cultures, has been produced for decades. But consumers and experts told CNBC that the buzz surrounding the “heated rivalry” has pushed this corner of LGBTQ+ media further into the mainstream, especially among straight American women.

More than 900,000 videos have been posted on TikTok using the hashtag “fujoshi,” Japanese slang for female fans of these stories. google Late last year, searches for terms related to yaoi fandom surged to an unprecedented level in the United States, underscoring the subgenre’s growing profile in the country.

“This is all meant to be a joke, but it’s about women coming out of the closet with genres that they’ve invested in,” said Champaign Graves, a female consumer consulting and podcast host. “This is not a new phenomenon. It’s something that women feel comfortable talking about and sharing.”

everything she said

HBOAccording to “Heat Rivalry”’s U.S. streaming platform, about two-thirds of the series’ viewers were women. During the show’s press tour, the production team and lead actors fielded repeated questions about why they think the show particularly resonates with women.

“‘Rivals’ made straight women go, ‘Okay, I want to see more of this,'” said Emily Searle, a social media content creator who posted several posts expressing her affinity for the show.

Demand for this type of content has grown beyond the six-episode “Heated Rivals” series.

Youth drama “Call Me by Your Name” sonyon the movie review platform Letterboxd, the ninth-most fans of narrative feature films identified as women. This is 46 slots higher than the equivalent list for men.

According to Nielsen, nearly seven in 10 people who watched a Timothée Chalamet movie in the first three months of 2026 were women.

“Red, White and Royal Blue” is a 2023 political rom-com. AmazonAccording to Nielsen research, 61% of viewers were women.

lions gate Since the beginning of last year, 60% of viewers for “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a documentary about a gay football player, have been female, according to Nielsen data shared with CNBC.

“Twilight” next?

This year, female readers continue to take note of author Rachel Reid’s “Heat Rivalry” and other male romance books on Fable, a book discussion platform owned by Scribd. After looking through Reed’s catalog, it appears they’ve picked up other titles in the subgenre, including 2011’s The Song of Achilles, a reimagining of Greek mythology.

“This is more than just another addition to a long series of small trends,” said Kim Allee, marketing director at Fable. “This feels like it’s much more important than that.”

Tracking accurate book sales statistics by gender can be difficult. But anecdotally, the majority of male-male romance readers appear to be straight women, said Jennifer Bokal, president-elect of the Romance Writers of America, a trade group for romance writers.

Bokal said she saw women “everywhere” wearing “Heated Rivalry” merchandise at Bookcon in April. Bokal said the excitement about the show and the book has given it momentum to rival the “Fifty Shades of Gray” and “Twilight” series.

On the surface, “Heated Rivals” and other male-on-male love stories may be an unexpected choice, given that women are not depicted as protagonists or love interests. But Arie said female users of Fable have been struck by the emotional depth of this subgenre, so much so that “admiration” has become a buzzword to describe what draws them to these books.

“It shows the kind of love and romance that people should have, regardless of their gender,” said Gianna Saad, 30, whose bookshelf is filled with novels in the subgenre by authors such as Scarlett Drake and TJ Clune. “There’s a deeper level to everything that’s going on in these kinds of books.”

Showcasing a variety of stories

Some of these titles became mainstream hits, due in part to word-of-mouth support from a predominantly female fanbase.

Mr. Reed’s novel is one of the most read e-books this year on Scribd’s Eveland subscription service, according to data released by the company this week. More broadly, Fables Alley said love stories between men have been supplanted by “romantasy” as the most popular type of romance book.

Amazon announced that “Red, White and Royal Blue” drove new subscriptions and quickly became one of the most-watched rom-coms on its Prime Video platform. The film Red, White and Royal Blue and the television series Rivals are both in production for their second installments.

Producer Tom Nunan, a former network and studio executive who now teaches at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, said viewers will see more stories of same-sex relationships between athletes on screen as producers seek to recreate the scenario of a “heated rivalry.”

But Nunan said the bigger lesson for Hollywood should be that creating original and authentic stories is rewarded by audiences. She said the industry has long tried to capture the attention of women, who make up the majority of scripted entertainment viewers, through diverse and thought-provoking plots.

“When a show like ‘Heated Rivals’ takes off, it reminds us what a rich part of life this is,” Nunan said. This is also a reminder to “try to set the show as accurately and authentically as possible, because in that scenario everyone wins.”

While these releases have garnered fanfare and praise, LGBTQ+ advocates have also warned that the overall community’s representation on screen is shrinking.

GLAAD, a nonprofit LGBTQ+ advocacy and media watchdog organization, announced that the percentage of films with LGBTQ+ scripts by top film distributors decreased by approximately 14% from 2023 to 2024. The group reported that the number of LGBTQ+ characters on television shows has decreased by about 23% in the 2024-2025 season compared to three years ago.

“On the one hand, I think it’s encouraging,” said Katherine Sender, a Cornell University professor who studies LGBTQ+ media, about the excitement over the “heated rivalry.” “But on the other hand, I don’t think we should be too optimistic.”

“Everything I can think of.”

Admittedly, not all male-on-male love stories find a large female audience. The “Heartstopper” series is Netflixand the romantic comedy “Love, Simon.” disney20th Century Fox both skewed slightly toward male viewers in the first quarter, according to Nielsen.

There is also evidence that the genre’s fan base extends beyond women who identify as straight. On CNN’s New Year’s Eve special, co-host Andy Cohen asked musician Brandi Carlile if lesbians are similarly into “violent rivalries.”

“That’s all I can think of,” Carlisle replied.