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The hockey crowds in Heated Rivalry are VFX and the raw footage looked like "COVID hockey" because no one was in the stands
Heated Rivalry was sold to HBO before the show's VFX had been finalized.
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You'd think that there are plenty of people who would love to see a hockey show like Heated Rivalry film its skating sequences, but in the first season of the HBO Max show, there were no people in the stands watching the games.
At BookCon 2026's Heated Rivalry panel with writer/director/producer Jacob Tierney and Game Changers writer Rachel Reid, the two revealed that the version of the show that was bought by HBO Max from Canadian studio Crave lacked some critical elements of the final product: music and visual effects.
"We sold it to HBO mid-October. But there was no VFX, no music, no nothing. It was not [sound] mixed," Tierney began. "You said it looked like COVID hockey. There was no crowd," Reid recalled. "You should see episode 5 with nobody cheering," quipped Tierney. "That kiss with no crowd," Reid said.
Now, I'm imagining that episode 5 arena moment with the sound of... nobody cheering. Chilling!
Watch the full Heated Rivalry panel from BookCon 2026 here:
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