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The protagonists of Heated Rivalry at a premiere in Toronto, Ontario on 24 November 2025 (Harold Feng/Getty Images)
A hit Canadian TV series showcases everything that’s right about cultural confidence.
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Heated Rivalry: Canada's soft power flexHeated Rivalry: Canada's soft power flex
It’s impossible to avoid the breakout show of the recent holidays, Heated Rivalry. Adapted from the Game Changers series written by Canadian author Rachel Reid, the story follows hockey stars Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov as they navigate high-profile sporting careers alongside their burgeoning romance.
The series has broken ground in an industry of big-name, big-budget streaming juggernauts as a local Canadian production with unknown actors and modest funding. Canada’s state subsidy and tax credit model for screen production — a key facilitator for Heated Rivalry — is often cited as one of the world’s most effective cultural policy frameworks precisely because it combines industrial support with soft-power outcomes. Heated Rivalry emerged from this ecosystem because the policy settings enabled culturally confident and exportable storytelling.
Canada’s screen funding system rests on three mutually reinforcing pillars: direct public funding, tax credits, and cultural content regulation. Federal agencies such as Telefilm Canada and the Canada Media Fund provide direct public funding through grants and equity investments to Canadian-controlled productions. These funds prioritise Canadian intellectual property, Canadian creative leadership (writers, directors, producers), and domestic storytelling. Crucially, funding decisions are not overly prescriptive about themes or messaging. This gives creators latitude to work within popular genres (sports drama, youth content, etc) while still meeting “CanCon” (Canadian content) requirements.
Canada offers a generous refundable federal production tax credit for Canadian content, typically covering a percentage of eligible Canadian labour costs. This is layered with provincial tax credits (for example, in Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec), which further reduce production costs. The combined effect offsets a considerable chunk of eligible expenditure, markedly lowering financial risk for producers. In addition, Canadian broadcasters and streaming platforms operating in Canada are required and incentivised to invest in Canadian content. This guarantees a domestic commissioning and distribution pathway, making Canadian projects more attractive to private investors and international partners. Global platforms benefit from reduced production costs while still accessing Canadian funding streams, provided Canadian creative control is retained.
The success of Heated Rivalry demonstrates how Canada’s state subsidy model for screen production can generate supersized soft-power returns by backing culturally confident, globally legible storytelling.
Within this framework, Heated Rivalry was financed as a Canadian cultural product even though it targeted a global audience. The focus on hockey, and Canadian cities and cultural norms, satisfied CanCon criteria, while the genre and tone made it internationally legible. By opting for budget constraints over creative ones, the production was able to take risks on emerging actors and creators, cutting through an industry that places a premium on tried and true names and faces, to create a series that has resonated deeply with broad audiences. Fundamentally, Canada’s subsidy and tax credit model succeeds because it aligns cultural policy, industrial strategy, and soft power.
Perhaps there are some lessons for Australia here, especially on how its often didactic cultural content fails to gain mass international popularity. Soft power is most effective when it is embedded, not advertised. Australia’s screen funding ecosystem (through Screen Australia and state agencies) has traditionally prioritised overt “Australianness” in the content it funds, often aimed inward rather than outward and avoiding genre risk. While these productions are culturally valuable, they do not always translate into global influence, largely because Australia’s subsidy model rewards economic offsets and not necessarily storytelling or Australian cultural power.
While movies like Thor and Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed in Australia under these subsidies and created jobs in the country, they did not necessarily build on Australian soft power — they were still culturally American. When Hollywood productions do capitalise on the Australian setting, such as the recent films Anyone but You and The Surfer, the main characters are generally fish-out-of-water Americans, with the Australian stereotype of the sun-kissed blonde surfer standing in for the diversity of Australian life that might otherwise resonate with global audiences.
The success of Heated Rivalry demonstrates how Canada’s state subsidy model for screen production can generate supersized soft-power returns by backing culturally confident, globally legible storytelling. Funded through a mix of federal and provincial mechanisms, the Canadian model is designed not merely to sustain a domestic industry but to export Canadian identity, values, and places through popular culture. Heated Rivalry succeeded precisely because it was not conceived as a “nation-branding” exercise, but as a compelling story that happened to be unmistakably Canadian.
About the authors
Teesta Prakash
Dr. Prakash is a Research Fellow (Security and Geopolitics) at the Australia India Institute. Her research focus is geoeconomics of India, Southeast Asia and the Quad.
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