The messy relationship between romance novels and ice hockey
The niche world of hockey novels is receiving increasing attention from the general public after the wife of an NHL player criticized fans of the book who she said posted comments and videos on social media about her husband that were “predatory and exploitative.”
This is what happened when the worlds of professional sports, romance novels and TikTok collided.
First there was BookTok.
On TikTok, people share book reviews and recommendations under the hashtag #BookTok. The community has become a major player in the publishing world, with more than 100 authors with a large BookTok following generating $760 million in revenue in 2022, a 60 percent increase from 2021, according to Circana BookScan, an organization that tracks sales of printed books.
Romance is a big part of the BookTok universe, as is the popular subgenre of hockey romance, which falls under the broader category of sports romance.
Recent hits include Anna Zabo and L.A. Witt’s “Scoreless Game,” a love story between two old friends who are players on the fictional Pittsburgh Griffins. In Sarina Bowen’s “Overnight Sensation,” an office intern for the fictional Brooklyn Bruisers moves in with a player after she moves out of the apartment she shares with her father, the hockey league’s commissioner.
The success of these books has been attributed to a surge in reader interest in ice hockey, and some professional and collegiate teams have embraced this new audience.
In Australia, where ice hockey is not particularly popular, professional teams have credited BookTok with an increasing number of matches and fan interest.
Melbourne Mustangs Events and Media Manager Sarah Bricknall told The Hills Shire Timesa Sydney newspaper reported that since the team joined TikTok in May, 15 to 30 BookTok fans had attended every home game.
How did it go wrong?
On the Internet, the lines between fictional players and real players can become blurred, especially when teams use BookTok to promote themselves.
A video posted to the Seattle Kraken’s official TikTok account, which has since been archived, showed Alex Wennberg, a center for the team, walking down a hallway in a suit that read “when you accidentally become a booktok account and now that’s all you can post.”
Other posts from romance fans on BookTok have talked about a specific player as a replacement for a favorite fictional hockey player or have shown game footage with quotes from hockey books. Some of these messages are sexually explicit, and some fans have posted explicit comments on players’ personal social media accounts.
Emily Rath, the author of ‘Pucking Around,’ an Amazon bestseller, said on TikTok that some fans had raised concerns about inappropriate behavior towards players earlier this year.
“True hockey romance readers have been through this before,” Ms. Rath said on TikTok. “We all saw it happening in April, we were sounding the alarm, we were asking for it to stop.”
The conflict came to a head when the wife of an NHL player became involved.
The issue began to draw attention from outside the romance world in July, when Felicia Wennberg, Alex Wennberg’s wife, said some reports about her husband went too far.
Mrs. Wennberg said on Instagram Stories that while she had initially joked about some of the videos and comments, they had since “crossed the line of what it means to like someone and when it actually sounds quite predatory and exploitative.”
Her statement outlined what she found acceptable, such as positive comments about her husband’s appearance, and what she did not do, such as chanting ‘krak my back’ at players during games. She asked people to “think twice” about their posts.
In response, her Instagram account was flooded with harassing messages.
Mr. Wennberg then issued a statement on social media about the ‘mean comments’.
“We can all take a joke and funny comments, but when it gets personal and becomes something bigger that affects our family, we have to tell you that we have had enough,” he wrote. “Enough sexual harassment and intimidation of our character and our relationship.”
The Kraken has been around ever since deleted his TikTok posts about BookTok.
How did TikTok creators respond?
The sexually explicit messages were posted by a small part of the BookTok community.
One creator, Kierra Lewis, had made a video that Ms. Wennberg cited as an example of inappropriate behavior, and Ms. Lewis has since posted a handful of videos of videos respond to the situation.
Ms Lewis, who has 1.1 million followers on TikTok, had flown to a Kraken game earlier this year after she posted videos containing explicit comments about NHL players, including Mr. Wennberg.
She said she had sent Ms Wennberg a private message on Instagram to apologize. Ms Lewis said the Kraken TikTok account had unfollowed her, leaving her “confused and upset”.
In her videos responding to the controversy, Ms. Lewis expressed frustration with the team pulling out after cheering her on, and with Ms. Wennberg for using one of Ms. Lewis’s posts as an example. She defended her videos by saying TikTok is for “entertainment.”
Ms. Lewis did not respond to a request for comment.
The Kraken said in a statement that they originally partnered with BookTok to connect with new audiences, but this situation reminded them “that unintended consequences can occur.”
“It is disappointing that a small percentage of online commenters crossed a line,” the statement said. “We view this as a learning opportunity for the organization and have taken appropriate action.”
