By the time you read this, Boston may have already surrendered. Not to the Mariners — to Heated Rivalry, the gay hockey romance phenomenon that has somehow gone from a self-published novel to a Fenway Park theme night in roughly seven years, which is frankly faster than most Red Sox rebuilding cycles.
If you’ve been living under a rock (or just don’t have a BookTok account), here’s the situation: Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry — a 2019 novel about two rival professional hockey players, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, maintaining a secret relationship while competing against each other — became a massive bestseller, then an HBO Max / Crave television series starring Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie as the world’s most statistically improbable couple. The show dropped, the fandom exploded, and now Boston is hosting what can only be described as a full-blown Heated Rivalry takeover weekend.
Saturday, August 30: Harrison at Legacy — The “Secret Rivalry Rave”
Harrison — the UK producer, vocalist, and DJ born Harrison Manley-Shaw — is the unofficial soundtrack artist of the Heated Rivalry fandom. His euphoric dance cover of t.A.T.u.’s “All the Things She Said” went viral after being featured on the show, hitting the Top 10 on US iTunes and climbing to #1 on Spotify’s Viral chart. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to either fall in love or do something reckless in a locker room. Possibly both.
He’s bringing his “Secret Rivalry Rave” to Legacy (79 Warrenton St, Boston) on Sunday, August 30 at 7:30 PM. It’s a 2+ hour live DJ set for $30, which is frankly less than you’d pay for parking near Fenway the next night. Tickets are available via Eventbrite and Songkick, and based on the social media frenzy, they will not last.
Listen: Harrison — “All the Things She Said”
Sunday, August 31: Heated Rivalry Night at Fenway Park
This is the big one. The Red Sox — a 124-year-old Major League Baseball franchise — are hosting a dedicated Heated Rivalry Night on Monday, August 31, when they face the Seattle Mariners at 7:00 PM. The promotion sold 12,000 dedicated tickets in 48 hours, setting a Fenway Park ticket promo record. Let that sink in: a gay hockey romance property sold out a baseball stadium’s promotional inventory faster than any giveaway in the park’s century-plus history.
The night features special Rozanov and Hollander Red Sox jerseys (yes, character names on actual baseball jerseys), and Harrison is performing live. The combination of a 37,000-person baseball crowd, a UK DJ playing a viral t.A.T.u. cover, and jersey names that belong to fictional gay hockey players is the kind of cultural crossover that would have been literally unimaginable five years ago. And yet here we are.
The game is sold out of its Heated Rivalry ticket allotment, but standard game tickets are still available if you just want to be in the building when it happens.
Also This Weekend: Drag Brunches Around Town
Because Boston apparently doesn’t believe in doing anything halfway, the Heated Rivalry energy extends well beyond Fenway:
- Illusions the Drag Queen Brunch Show — Saturday, August 30, in Boston. Celebrity-inspired drag performances paired with comedy, music, and audience interaction. Think drag brunch meets celebrity impersonation meets “why did I wear heels to brunch.”
- Drag Me to Brunch at Carrie Nation — Sunday, August 30, 12:00 PM, downtown Boston. A full buffet spread followed by a drag show, because no weekend built around queer hockey romance is complete without at least one drag performance and a cocktail.
- Heated Rivalry Drag Brunch at Summer Shack Cambridge — The next HR-themed brunch is coming up September 5, hosted by Flip Phone Events, in case this weekend isn’t enough and you need your Rozanov and Hollander fix on a regular basis.
Why This Matters (Or At Least Why It’s Fun)
There’s something genuinely remarkable about watching a piece of queer media — one that started as a self-published romance novel about two men falling in love in a sport that still has a complicated relationship with homosexuality — become a cultural force strong enough to sell out a Major League Baseball stadium. Rachel Reid wrote a book about two hockey players who couldn’t stop thinking about each other. Now there are Red Sox jerseys with their names on them, a British DJ selling out Fenway, and drag brunches across Boston celebrating the whole thing.
If that’s not the most Boston-meets-queer-culture thing to happen this year, I don’t know what is. The Red Sox are sitting pretty at 72-59, third in the AL East with a +101 run differential and a 99.8% shot at the postseason. They’re having a great season — and now they’re hosting a night for a gay hockey romance show that sold 12,000 tickets in two days. That’s a winning record in every possible way.
Sources: Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry (2019, Game Changers series); Heated Rivalry TV series on HBO Max / Crave; MLB.com/RedSox; Sportico; Eventbrite; Spotify.
Related reading
- Heated Rivalry Season 2: Four New Faces Join Queer Hockey’s Biggest Show
- Heated Rivalry Season 2: Filming Starts This Month, New Cast Revealed, and Everything We Know So Far
- Top 10 Coming Out Scenes
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