By Gig Hope
There is a persistent drumbeat. Cow bells are being rung as the crowd cheers, their collective breath clouding in the frigid air of the Phillip Swimming and Ice Skating Centre. A picture of a 1960s flat-roofed brutalist municipal building; half is a public swimming pool, the other half, incongruously, an ice skating rink. It is this half of the building that is filled to capacity, standing room only.
Fans are dressed in thick hockey jerseys and puffer coats. A few canny spectators are wrapped in blankets they’ve brought from home to protect themselves from the freezing concrete tiered seating they have secured by arriving hours early.
It is the first finals game for the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL). The Canberra Brave are facing off against the Central Coast Rhinos and it is Braves territory.
I am standing rink side amongst a group of die-hard Braves fans. Little shards of ice sprinkle over us as a player gracefully saves himself from a fall after being thrown into the wall by the opposing team.
There is a true sense of community in this crowd. Large groups of families and friends catch up on life during the game. Players traipse off the ice at half-time, many with blood dripping down their faces; dolling out high fives and fist bumps. A man in his mid-40s clasps a player on the shoulder yelling “I’m so proud of you”. Kids shuffle in their black athletic shoes on the ice, competing for who can push the puck furthest at half-time to win team-branded prizes.
I made a five-hour round trip to Canberra because something unprecedented has been happening in the world of Australian ice hockey.
The AIHL is a semi-professional league, players keep day jobs as tradies and personal trainers, and many of the teams operate at a volunteer level.
The sport has always had its few loyal fans. However, the 2023 season saw an increase in ticket sales with the Sydney Ice Dogs receiving a 200 per cent bump.
Part of this rapid growth is thanks to a marked effort by the marketing departments and social media managers of AIHL teams to court an unusual demographic – female fans of romance novels.
On TikTok there is a community of people who call themselves BookTok where, as the name suggests, books are discussed. Within this group a fanbase of predominantly women discusses romance books.
Among these fans, stories taking place within the world of sport dominate and ice hockey reigns supreme; as of August 2023, all top 10 books on Amazon’s sports romance bestsellers list were hockey themed. Leading the women of BookTok to create “thirst edits” (short, quick edited videos of hockey players dressed in suits, sweaty from the game and looking at the camera) of their favourite hockey players and posting the videos #hockeyromance.
The hockey romance hashtag has accrued 676.5 million views. This trend did not go unnoticed by the marketing teams and social media managers of the AIHL. The Brisbane Lightning went from having two videos posted on the team’s official TikTok, with 100 followers, to 6300 followers after the team started creating and posting Booktok-related content.
This social media engagement saw the Lightning go from averaging around 100 spectators a game for the 2022 season to around 500 during the 2023 season.
Emily Rath, author of the wildly popular “why choose” (where the protagonist is engaged in romantic and physical relationships with multiple partners) hockey romance Pucking Around, led the charge in North America; encouraging her fans to get involved with the sport. Rath’s fans began attending National Hockey League (NHL) games and creating their own TikTok content while tagging both BookTok and the NHL. That led to the NHL inviting BookTokers to games and sending them merchandise.
Inspired by Rath behind the scenes, members of the AIHL made a concerted effort to appeal to the BookTok set via social media.
Sarah Bricknall, event and media manager of the Melbourne Mustangs, started creating BookTok content in mid-May; 15 to 30 BookTokers came to every game of the season thereafter.
Even the Canberra Brave, oft considered the team with the most devoted fans, courted the BookTok demographic; 22 of their 47 TikToks are tagged #BookTok – including a particularly cheeky video where the players are in various states of undress, being scandalised by the best-known hockey romance, Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker.
However, no one within the AIHL took a more targeted approach to social media engagement than Sydney Ice Dogs sponsorship and media manager Liam Watson.
In the team’s non-descript offices in early April 2023, Watson was sitting at his desk idly scrolling TikTok, lazily swivelling side to side in his chair, when he saw a series of TikTok’s that would change the AIHL season.
Watson watched as Rath, hockey thirst edits, and discussions of Icebreaker all racked up millions of views, noticing many thirst edits were created by official NHL accounts. Thousands of women were engaging with these videos, sending Watson on an odyssey into the world of BookTok. This was the catalyst for Watson’s social media-led fan engagement attack.
Sydney Ice Dogs players arrived at the team’s home rink at Macquarie Centre on a June morning to find lapel microphones and mobile cameras waiting for them.
The TikTok series Mic’d up Mondays was born.
During their Monday training sessions, the team begrudgingly wore lapel mics, capturing off the cuff moments like, “Tough day at the office Macca, he still missed the net”, “where the f*** is Dorny I’m gassed”, “you see that? I still got it”.
The master stroke of these videos came when Watson tagged the videos #BookTok. Mic’d up Mondays struck the perfect balance of good humor and cheekiness, sparking an extremely beneficial relationship between the team and the female hockey romance readership.
Having read and enjoyed Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker, Verin accepted friend and fellow booklover Laura’s invitation to attend an ice hockey game.
Thinking it would be just the two of them and maybe one other friend Verin was shocked to discover around 20 other female fans of hockey romance. These women were the Sydney Book Society, a Facebook book club Laura had joined a couple of months earlier.
The book club had put out an open call to meet up at an Ice Dogs game. The 20 women, many of whom were unversed in sports fandom, did not know what to expect from the close-knit crowds of the AIHL and were a little nervous. However, community recognised community and the hockey fans embraced the Sydney Book Society.
The relationship between the Sydney Book Society and the Ice Dogs became so solid that a book club member became a social media content creator for the team. Verin, Laura and the rest of the women felt comfortable and welcomed, rushing down from the stands to rinkside to get their copies of Icebreaker, Pucking Around, and other hockey romances signed by the players.
The Sydney Book Society’s excursion even led to a viral moment that was picked up by several media outlets, when sweat-drenched Ice Dogs star Daniel Pataky, asked a fan “what’s all the marks for?” referring to the heavily tabbed copy of Icebreaker he was signing. Red-faced and giggling the fan whispered, “it’s where all the good parts are”.
It is this cheekiness that has forged the strong relationship between romance readers and the AIHL. Laura, a first-time spectator, felt welcomed enough to enter a competition, winning a plaque signed by the team. Both Laura and Verin bought Ice Dogs merchandise, Watson came and spoke to the group, giving out stickers and later going to dinner with 12 of the women.
The longevity of the hockey romance bump on the AIHL is unknown but the sport has made fans out of two hockey romance readers.
Featured image: Sydney Ice Dogs star Daniel Pataky signs Laura’s copy of Icebreaker. Picture: Verin
