(Feature image courtesy Getty Images)
QUT Centre for Justice member, Dr Fiona Crawford (pictured), has co-written a piece for The Conversation this week on the topic, “Could Heated Rivalry bring a whole new fanbase to ice hockey – and can the sport embrace them?”. In this piece Fiona and co-author Dr Kasey Symons from Deakin University use the TV program Heated Rivalry as a case study to explore how queer romance can challenge exclusionary sports cultures, expand audiences, centre joy, and potentially drive real-world change—if sporting bodies are willing to listen and evolve.
Fiona and Kasey point out that a central theme of the program is the stark lack of openly queer men in professional sports, especially compared with women’s sport. Heated Rivalry presents a world where queer male athletes are visible, loved, and successful—highlighting how far real-life men’s sport still has to go. The authors discuss instances where inclusion in sport has been attempted but perhaps mishandled – demonstrating that surface-level gestures are insufficient without genuine understanding and protective policies.
The authors conclude,
“The market is there, it’s not what you’d expect, and it’s finally being catered to. Sports organisations should be paying attention.”
Dr Fiona Crawford works with the Homeless World Cup, a social enterprise that uses football to tackle homelessness. She has written two books on women’s football: Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women’s Football (co-written with Lee McGowan) and The Matilda Effect. Both focus on the intersection of gender equality with football – recognising that sport can be an incredible lens for examining social issues and a fantastic platform for enacting social change.
Fiona is an adjunct lecturer at the QUT Centre for Justice, and her research and work spans social and environmental issues and the arts, with particular focus on the topics of football (soccer), homelessness, and climate change.
In 2026 Fiona will lead a QUT Centre for Justice Briefing Paper Series on Sport and Social Change. As we prepare to host the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, an event that will entail local and global social, cultural, economic, and environmental outcomes, the QUT Centre for Justice is calling for papers into sport for social change. That is, papers around the strategic use of sports to examine and address social issues. The Call for Papers will be coming out soon – please keep an eye out if you would like to contribute.
Read more about the QUT Centre for Justice Briefing Paper Series here.
Read more about Fiona’s research here. You can also follow Fiona on Linkedin.
QUT Centre for Justice also hosts the Queer Research Group – a multi-disciplinary team, drawn from all over the university, researching a range of issues experienced by people of diverse sexualities, genders, and sex characteristics. Read more about the group, and their research, here.
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