Ask a romance reader how many gay hockey romance novels exist and even the devoted ones struggle to answer.
The reader-curated Goodreads shelf “Best M/M Hockey Romances” currently sits at 439 books. A second list, tracking new releases only, added 214 titles in 2025 alone.
The genre has exploded since Heated Rivalry – adapted from Canadian author Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels – became a hit for streamer Crave, with HBO Max carrying it here in Australia.
READ MORE: All the new faces joining season two of Heated Rivalry
Australian readers are very much part of the trend. Romance fiction sales in Australia have grown at an average of 49 per cent over three years, with sports romance – ice hockey titles among them – driving much of that growth, according to the ABC.
Dedicated romance bookstores have been opening around the country to keep up.
Local authors are getting in on it too. Darcy Green’s After the Siren, released in 2025, follows two queer men on a fictional AFL team, arriving not long after Mitch Brown became the first current or former male AFL player to publicly come out as bisexual.
READ MORE: ‘Love is hard to tackle’: why After the Siren is the AFL romance we needed
So who are the big names driving the numbers? Reid’s Game Changers series – Game Changer, Heated Rivalry, Tough Guy, Common Goal, Role Model and The Long Game – is up to six novels, with a seventh, Unrivaled, due in 2027.
American author Sarina Bowen’s Him universe, several titles co-written with Elle Kennedy, now runs to at least seven books: Him, Us, Good Boy, Stay, Epic, Top Secret and My Kind of Guy.
Then there’s the campus hockey world built by Eden Finley and Saxon James. Their CU Hockey series runs to nine books, and its spin-off, the Puckboys series, is already up to 10 – with the final book, Charming Puckboy landing in 2026.
READ MORE: Here’s where to start with the Puckboys series
Track the year-by-year Goodreads lists and the growth curve is stark: 54 new MM hockey romance titles catalogued in 2022, 108 in 2023, roughly 148 in 2024 and 214 in 2025. The 2026 list has already reached 134 – with months of the year still to go.
The genre even found its way into New York politics this year. Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged New Yorkers to stay home and read during a January snowstorm, name-checking Heated Rivalry – and e-book checkouts of the novel at the New York Public Library jumped 529 per cent almost overnight.
Publishing insiders point to a straightforward explanation for why studios keep coming back for more: built-in fanbases. “What’s exciting about BookTok is that it is not to be manipulated ... you can’t predict what might pop,” talent agent Mirabel Michelson said, per The Ankler.
Heated Rivalry is no longer the only hockey romance on screen, either. Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series – following her college hockey team but told through male-female pairings – premiered on Prime Video this year, and Netflix’s Finding Her Edge joined the wave in January.
As for why hockey specifically keeps producing romance hits, authors and critics point to the same ingredients: enemies-to-lovers rivalries between teammates or opponents, the built-in intimacy of a locker room “found family,” and a real-world backdrop of athletes slowly coming out that gives the fiction extra weight.
The appetite shows no sign of slowing. Heated Rivalry season two is currently filming for a 2027 premiere on HBO Max, adapting The Long Game as its source material.
Between Reid’s seventh Game Changers novel, the Puckboys series and whatever BookTok decides to champion next, anyone who thought 439 books was the ceiling for this genre should probably think again.