What’s Next in Sports Romance: The Books Coming to Our Screens

Sports romance is taking over TV, and it’s about time

For years, sports romance lived in the perfect little corner of BookTok where the stakes were simple. There was one emotionally unavailable athlete, one girl who absolutely should not fall for him, one locker room full of unresolved tension, and a fanbase ready to defend their fictional book boyfriend like he was a real life sportsman. But now, sports romance is officially leaving the page and stepping onto the screen.

Between Off Campus becoming one of Prime Video’s buzziest romance releases, Heated Rivalry bringing hockey romance to a whole new audience, and studios suddenly realizing that women have been carrying the sports-romance industrial complex on their backs, the genre is having a serious moment. It’s not even just one sport or one show. Yes, we’re obsessed over the hockey ones, but there’s soccer, figure skating, college sports, queer sports rom-coms. The girls asked for sports romance adaptations, and apparently Hollywood finally figured it out.

So, what’s next? Let’s talk about the sports romance books already headed to TV and film, and the series we need adapted immediately.

Heated Rivalry Changed the Conversation

Heated Rivalry, based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, brought Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s hockey romance to a much wider audience. The show’s success has also revived interest in Reid’s books, including the upcoming Unrivaled, which continues Shane and Ilya’s story. What makes Heated Rivalry especially important is not just that it is a hockey romance, it is that it is a queer hockey romance set inside a sport and culture that has historically felt very straight, very masculine, and very resistant to anything that challenges that image. That is what gives the story so much of its tension.

Shane and Ilya are not just two rivals secretly falling in love. They are two male professional hockey players falling in love in a world where image, toughness, privacy, masculinity, and public perception matter constantly. The NHL, and men’s professional hockey more broadly, has a very specific culture – locker room codes, media pressure, fan expectations, national identity, sponsorships, team politics, and the unspoken demand that players fit a certain version of what a male athlete is “supposed” to be. So when you place a queer romance inside that world, the stakes change completely.

The secrecy is not just a trope, it’s really a means of survival. The longing is not just romantic angst, it’s shaped by fear, pressure, and the reality of being in a space where queerness has not always been openly welcomed. The rivalry is not just fun tension, it becomes a shield, and sometimes the only socially acceptable way for them to be intensely connected in public. That is why Heated Rivalry hits differently.

It understands that sports can be both the thing keeping the characters apart and the thing tying them together. Hockey gives Shane and Ilya their careers, their identities, their public mythology, and their reason to keep orbiting each other, but it also creates the world where being together openly feels almost impossible.

That is especially powerful because women’s sports and men’s sports often handle queerness very differently. In women’s sports, queer identity is often more visible and more openly part of the culture, even if those athletes still deal with sexism, scrutiny, and unfair treatment. However, in men’s sports, especially in leagues like the NHL, queerness has historically been treated as something hidden, unspoken, or seen as incompatible with the hypermasculine athlete image.

So Heated Rivalry is not just “hockey, but romantic”, it is romance shaped by the pressure of male-centric professional sports showing us what happens when desire, identity, ambition, and fear all exist inside the same high-pressure arena.

Off Campus Proved the Demand Was Already There

Off Campus, based on Elle Kennedy’s beloved hockey romance series, brought the Briar University world to Prime Video with Season 1 centered on The Deal, Hannah Wells, and Garrett Graham. Prime Video has already renewed the series for Season 2, and Entertainment Weekly reported that the next season will focus on Dean and Allie.

Off Campus was never just about one couple. Yes, Hannah and Garrett are the heart of The Deal, but the reason people love this universe so much is because it feels lived-in. Briar does not feel like a random college backdrop, it really feels like a world you want to hang out in. The hockey house, the friendships, the team dynamics, the inside jokes, the parties, the drama, the side characters you immediately start tracking before they get their own story, that is the magic of Briar U.

It has that older teen/college drama feeling people are nostalgic for. The kind of vibe that made shows like One Tree Hill, The Vampire Diaries, and Gossip Girl feel so addictive. The plots weren’t always realistic, but the world felt familiar. You wanted to know who was hooking up, who was fighting, who was secretly in love, who was spiraling, and who was about to become everyone’s next favorite character. That is exactly why Off Campus works so well as a show.

It gives viewers a couple to root for, but it also gives them a friend group to invest in, and that is what so many people miss from older TV. Shows used to let us live with characters for multiple seasons. We watched them fall in love, mess up, grow up, switch friend groups, make bad choices, and somehow end up back in the same kitchen, dorm room, locker room, or party by the end of the episode. Off Campus taps into that same feeling, but for the sports romance generation.

Each book has its own central couple, but the friendships, team dynamics, side plots, and future love interests carry over. That is what makes Off Campus feel bigger than one romance story, or a one season show. You are not just watching Garrett and Hannah fall in love, you are being introduced to an entire world of characters you already know are going to wreck you later. (Cause I see yall online, yall are already losing it…)

I think that is why Off Campus hit the way it did. It was not just giving viewers a hockey romance, it was giving them the kind of TV experience we have been missing! We want the messy, romantic, friend-group-centered, emotionally dramatic, and easy to become completely obsessed with shows, it’s all we know!

The Adaptations Already Coming

Hollywood clearly got the memo, because sports romance adaptations are stacking up fast.

Ana Huang’s Gods of the Game

Ana Huang’s Gods of the Game series is getting a three-film adaptation from Amazon MGM Studios. The series is set in the world of English Premier League soccer, with the first book, The Striker, already leading the charge into movie territory. 

This one feels major because Ana Huang already has a massive romance readership, and soccer gives the adaptation international appeal. Glamorous athlete romance, Premier League drama, emotional damage… the material is right there. This could easily become one of the biggest sports romance adaptations if Amazon leans into the luxury, intensity, and high-stakes celebrity-athlete atmosphere.

Meryl Wilsner’s Cleat Cute

Meryl Wilsner’s Cleat Cute is being developed at Amazon MGM as Playing the Field, an ensemble comedy following a professional women’s soccer team in New Orleans. Sarah Tapscott is attached as showrunner, writer, and executive producer, with Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe’s A Touch More also involved. 

This is exactly the kind of adaptation sports romance needs! Playing the Field is a  sapphic, funny, team-centered comedy that is rooted in women’s sports. The book follows the dynamic between newly drafted phenom Phoebe Matthews and team captain Grace Henderson, which should already gives you the perfect setup of what this adaptation entails – admiration, rivalry, attraction, pressure, and a lot of “this is probably a bad idea” energy. 

Liz Tomforde’s Windy City Series

Liz Tomforde’s bestselling Windy City series is also being developed by Amazon MGM as a TV series, with Alison McDonald attached. The books are set in Chicago and feature different sports-centered romances, including Mile High, The Right Move, Caught Up, Play Along, and Rewind It Back. 

This one makes so much sense as a series because the books already have that interconnected romance-world structure. This series features different couples, overlapping characters, big emotional arcs, and enough sports-adjacent drama to keep the universe moving.

If adapted well, Windy City could become one of those shows where every season has its own couple, but everyone is still watching for the friend group. Windy City is the ultimate found family trope and I cannot wait to see their family dinners on my screen!!

Layne Fargo’s The Favorites

Layne Fargo’s The Favorites is headed to Netflix as a feature adaptation, with Cathy Schulman producing and Kate Gersten attached to write. The novel is a figure skating sports romance inspired by Wuthering Heights, centered on an intense love story in the world of elite skating. 

This one has prestige drama potential. Figure skating is already theatrical, emotional, and visually stunning, and pairing that with obsessive romance and ambition could make the adaptation feel darker and more dramatic than the typical rom-com format. I hope to see sparkly costumes, but more importantly some devastating eye contact. 

Lynn Painter’s Fake Skating

Lynn Painter’s Fake Skating is being developed as a film by Sony Pictures, with Will Gluck’s Olive Bridge producing. Deadline reported that Painter is also serving as an executive producer. 

This feels like the lighter, sweeter side of the sports romance adaptation wave. The title alone gives you the promise! This story features fake dating, skating, and  romantic comedy beats. It could be the kind of adaptation that brings in both YA romance readers and sports-rom-com viewers who want something fun, accessible, and rewatchable.

Chloe Walsh’s Boys of Tommen

Prime Video has greenlit an adaptation of Chloe Walsh’s Boys of Tommen series, with Poppy Cogan serving as lead writer and executive producer alongside Walsh and others. The series is expected to begin with Binding 13 and Keeping 13. 

While Boys of Tommen is not just a sports romance, rugby is central to the world, and the emotional intensity of the series has made it a massive BookTok favorite. This adaptation could easily sit in the same conversation as sports romance because it blends school drama, trauma, romance, and athletic pressure. It is definitely going to need a careful hand, though. This is not a fluffy adaptation… the source material is heavy, emotional, and deeply character-driven, so the screen version will have to balance the romance with the darker themes that made readers so attached in the first place.

What Does This Mean for Sports Romance?

Sports romance has the exact ingredients studios are chasing right now. Studios want built-in fandoms, recognizable tropes, franchise potential, emotional stakes, ensemble casts, and viral-ready couples. These books do not just have readers, they have communities full of people already making edits, fancasts, playlists, quote graphics, and entire personality assessments based on these characters. That is a built-in audience.

Unlike some romance subgenres, sports romance can easily expand beyond the couple. You can build a whole show around a team, a city, a friend group, or a league. While romance is the heart of the story, the world gives it legs.

That is why this wave feels so good, it’s not about which book was popular, but it's a whole genre shift that Hollywood was begging for.

The Series I Need On My Screen Next: Chelsea Curto’s D.C. Stars

Now that sports romance is clearly having its screen moment, I need to say this as loud as I possible can… Chelsea Curto’s D.C. Stars series belongs on TV.

The books have everything an adaptation needs! It has hockey, found family, multiple couples, emotional growth, friendship dynamics, and that cozy/chaotic sports romance feeling that makes readers want to move into the fictional universe immediately. A TV adaptation would work so well because the series already feels episodic in the best way. Each book has its own couple and trope, but the larger team world ties everything together. This gives a show the perfect structure with one season per couple, and the rest of the team slowly becoming family.

What I Want From the Next Wave

If sports romance is going to keep coming to screen, I do not just want studios to buy the titles, I want them to really understand why readers love them. We do not just want a hot athlete and a love interest, we want more. We want the team dynamics, the rivalries, the inside jokes, the rituals, the weird little superstitions, the post-game exhaustion, the “he looked for her in the crowd” moments. We want to see the public pressure and the private softness. We’re dying for the friendships that make the romance feel bigger.

With Off Campus, Heated Rivalry, Gods of the Game, Cleat Cute, Windy City, The Favorites, Fake Skating, and Boys of Tommen all part of the conversation, it is clear that sports romance is not just trending, it is becoming a screen genre. The girls have been reading these books for years, and Hollywood is just finally catching up.