Russian court fines local news outlet for ‘LGBT propaganda’ over Heated Rivalry review

A court in the southern Russian city of Saratov has fined a local media outlet for distributing "LGBT propaganda" after it published a review of the Canadian television series Heated Rivalry.

The news agency SaratovBusinessConsulting was ordered to pay 500,000 rubles (€5,600), according to Mediazona, which cited the court's press service. The offending article, titled "Why Did 'Heated Rivalry' Become Popular?” was published on February 6 and has since been deleted from the outlet's website.

A second misdemeanour case under the same statute was brought against the agency's IT director, Andrey Bashkaikin, who was fined 50,000 rubles (€560).

An unnamed employee of the agency told Mediazona that the case stemmed from what they described as a "harmless review" of the series. "There's a certain series that's currently being widely discussed," the employee said. "The article came from a third-party content provider. It was published for a short time, but we quickly removed it."

Heated Rivalry premiered on the Canadian streaming platform Crave and on HBO Max in the United States in November 2025. Based on the Game Changers book series by author Rachel Reid, the show follows a secret romance between two professional hockey players: Russian star Ilya Rozanov and Canadian Shane Hollander.

Russia introduced a sweeping ban on so-called "LGBT propaganda" in November 2022, broadening a law that had previously only restricted the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relationships” to minors.

The legislation has since been used to prosecute a wide range of cases, including numerous fines for displaying rainbow flags on social media and a jail sentence handed to a woman for wearing rainbow-coloured frog earrings.

In January, Sorok Sorokov, a Russian Orthodox Christian organisation that campaigns for traditional values, announced that it would be petitioning the Prosecutor General’s Office and Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor to ban Heated Rivalry from being shown on Russian streaming services.