Since it premiered on HBO Max in late November, Heated Rivalry has rocketed with the force of a blue-line slap shot into the pop culture consciousness. It has spurred countless edits and fan posts on social media and made overnight sensations of stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams.
It’s also drawing in a large audience: According to HBO’s first-party data, Heated Rivalry is averaging 9 million viewers per episode in the United States, a number that will continue to grow for several more weeks (HBO and HBO Max measure viewing for 90 days after a season premiere). That puts the series in the upper echelon of HBO Max shows. HBO Max and Crave, the Canadian outlet that commissioned the show based on Rachel Reid’s romance novel, quickly ordered a second season.
One place Heated Rivalry hasn’t yet shown up, however, is in Nielsen’s streaming charts. The ratings provider has released data for all five weeks of the show’s run, but in none of those did the series crack the top 10.
So what gives? While there are some differences in how HBO and Nielsen collect their viewing data, the most likely explanation lies in how Nielsen classifies the show for its streaming rankings and Heated Rivalry’s release schedule.
Since it originated with Crave, Heated Rivalry is considered an acquired series, rather than an original show, in Nielsen’s streaming charts — and the bar for making the top 10 acquired series is consistently a good bit higher than it is for the original series rankings.
The streaming charts are ranked by total viewing time for all episodes of a series. In the five weeks Heated Rivalry was streaming new episodes (two on Nov. 28, then one per week through Dec. 26), the 10th-place show in the acquired show rankings averaged about 565 million minutes of watch time. By comparison, the No. 10 spot among original streaming shows over those weeks averaged 363 million minutes of viewing — a nearly 56 percent difference.
The acquired series chart is also dominated by shows with huge libraries — think Grey’s Anatomy and NCIS, each of which have more than 450 episodes — all available for streaming. Heated Rivalry’s weekly release and small episode count also put it at a disadvantage among acquired shows. It’s hardly unheard of for an HBO show to make the acquired series rankings in its first season — but they have tended to be shows like House of the Dragon and The Last of Us, with huge production and marketing budgets and based on extremely well-known IP.
Reid’s books have been bestsellers and have avid followings, but the growth of Heated Rivalry has been much more organic. HBO Max acquired U.S. rights to the the show just nine days before it premiered, leaving precious little time to mount a promo campaign. Which makes the show’s 9 million-and-counting viewers all the more remarkable.
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