By Amusingly being dubbed Canada’s biggest export in years, Crave and HBO’s six-episode gay hockey drama “Heated Rivalry” has just come to a close and with it comes word on just how popular the series has become.
In Canada, viewership of the series on Crave has jumped 400%. In the UK, a major bidding war broke out for the rights, with Sky landing the series recently. In Australia, it debuted at #2 on HBO Max and has been ranking #1 consistently for several weeks.
The US is where the real surprise is happening. HBO aired the first episode on November 28th – just 9 days after acquiring the series for U.S. distribution – which means marketing for the series was essentially non-existent. Its stars, both unknowns, hadn’t really done any press, and talk was all being driven by online fans of the books.
Despite those limitations, The Wrap reports that the show’s opening two episodes pulled in similar launch numbers to the network’s flagship medical drama “The Pitt” earlier this year, with its viewership increasing since then.
MediaPlayNews reports that the week of December 1st-7th, the first full week after the show became available on the service, the title was the fourth most-watched streaming series of that week according to JustWatch.
The title beat out the likes of “IT: Welcome to Derry” and “The Beast In Me”, and behind only the much more publicised “Pluribus,” “Stranger Things” and “Landman”. This past week (December 15th-22nd), it remained in fourth while “Fallout” moved into second and “Stranger Things” slipped to fifth.
As previously indicated, the series was quickly renewed for a second season midway through its run, though filming is still a while off, as no real development of further seasons has happened. In a new interview with GQ, stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie revealed that they’ve signed on for three seasons.
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