For years, sports romance has belonged to football and hockey. But lately, they’ve started to feel a little… played out.
Football? Too many concussions, too much off-field drama. Hockey? Too many interchangeable bros named Remy or Nik. Basketball, baseball, and even MMA pop up now and then, and F1 is having a moment, but the genre could use an infusion of fresh athletic blood.
So where should it go next? What sports could bring the high stakes, deep emotional arcs, and sizzling chemistry we crave? Here are some plots (and titles) I’d love to see:
Fault Lines (Tennis) – He was the golden boy of tennis until a US Open meltdown made him a meme. She’s a wildcard qualifier with a viral highlight reel and a chip on her shoulder. When they’re forced into a mixed doubles partnership for PR reasons, their game is all fire—whether they’re winning or smashing rackets at each other.
She Shoots, She Scores (Soccer) – The world’s most famous striker has built her career on ice-cold precision—on the field and off. But when a fearless, trash-talking rookie gets called up to the national team, their rivalry combusts into something even the tabloids can’t ignore. Is it loathing? Admiration? Lust? Or, worse, all three?
Roped In (Rock Climbing) – She’s a free solo legend with a reputation for being fearless. He’s a former competition climber who disappeared from the sport after a near-fatal fall. Now, an outdoor magazine is forcing them into a joint expedition for a documentary. He thinks she’s reckless. She thinks he’s scared. They’re both right.
Stick It to Me (Lacrosse) – A retired women’s lacrosse star has one rule: no coaching. But when a pro team offers her a job and a ridiculous salary, she takes it—if only to prove how doomed the whole thing is. Too bad her biggest skeptic is the team’s captain, a player she used to hate on principle and now might hate for completely different (and far more distracting) reasons.
Try and Take It (Rugby) – A hard-hitting flanker and a fast-talking fly-half are known for their on-field magic. Off the field, they’re absolute chaos—fistfights at practice, suspiciously long post-match cooldowns. The press assumes they despise each other. Their teammates assume they’re secretly sleeping together. The truth? Even they don’t know anymore.
The Center of Attention (Water Polo) – She was once the youngest player ever to make the Olympic team—until a doping scandal she didn’t commit took her down. Now, five years later, she’s training in obscurity, and the only person who believes in her comeback is the man who once coached her biggest rival. His career is on the line for vouching for her. So is her heart.
Tour de Flirt (Cycling) – She’s a sports journalist assigned to cover the Tour de France, and she’s sick of writing about the same five riders. He’s the peloton’s most infuriating star—brilliant on the bike, a menace off of it, and impossible to get a real interview with. When a long-haul transfer between stages throws them together, a bet turns into a challenge turns into something neither of them saw coming.
What sport would you love to see more of in romance? Any recent books that went beyond the usual playbook? I’d love to hear your recs.
Sumo wrestling? Off hand, I cannot think of a plot, but I am sure it can be done:)
Cricket is another one—it is a billion dollar international team sport with complicated colonial origins. A fertile source for someone with imagination.
Despite living in England for the last 45 years, I have never, ever been able to get my head around cricket! It makes no sense whatsoever to me 😉
Actually, I avoid sports romances; I have never liked them so not on my radar.
I hate sports, mostly, but LOVE sports romances!
If it is a sports romance, I would definitely want some sports in it. Sports romance without sports does not make any sense. Then why write a sports novel?
There are sports romance movies that have worked well, like Jerry Maguire.
I live with a sports fanatic and have three kids who are sports fan. I have learned SO much over the years from them that now we watch sports docs and I enjoy it!!
I think the “sports romance” label is still appropriate when a main character works in a sport, whether as a player or in a related duty (coach, team owner, medical support, etc.), but others may disagree.
I agree with you Mark. I’m not a sports enthusiast IRL and do not necessarily want gobs of game/match/meet details in my romance reading. But there are many romances with characters who are either athletes or work adjacent to them that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed over the years.
Growing up in India could not avoid cricket and in my younger days I used to be interested in tennis, basketball and even golf when Tiger Woods was playing it. But I have never read a single sports romance.
Cricket can actually lend itself to historical romances since it used to be the sport of the aristocracy, nawabs and princes and other members of the leisure class. It is a very old sport and became a leading sport in England in the 18th century and became a leading sport in all the English colonies in the 19th century. National teams competed with each other, traveling to other countries, playing long 5-day matches across several venues, a trip lasting at least two months. Because it was an international sport by late 19th and early twentieth centuries, writers like Kinsale who are capable of sprawling romances can do justice to cricket centered stories and also introduce multi-racial, multi-ethnic characters convincingly without twisting into convoluted knots a la Bridgerton series.
Or maybe polo? That definitely has “toff” connections in both India and England.
That’s a possibility too. But since historical British romances are written by American authors mostly, I doubt if American publishers would go for cricket or polo.
Australian here, currently watching the Champions Trophy. Australia’s men’s team just played Afghanistan, extremely reluctantly since the Taliban won’t let their women’s team play. You are so right about all the possibilities for cricket romances, both historical and contemporary actually, given all the complicated politics among the major nations who play. But I won’t hold my breath….
I won’t either.
To my knowledge, only Dorothy L. Sayers used cricket in any way in her Peter Wimsey detective novels. That was because Wimsey was an aristocrat, studied at Oxford, played on its varsity team and supposedly an accomplished player. So, the Oxford/cricket connection was used occasionally for sleuthing.
I love the Wimsey novels. The only example I can think of is one of Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley mysteries (published in 1993) which is called Playing for the Ashes and the murder victim is an England batsman. I read it a long time ago and all I remember is that the cricket parts didn’t quite ring true. George is American so I doubt she knew anything about the sport. It didn’t really affect the mystery plot but the unrealistic parts bugged me. So maybe it’s best if writers leave the game alone!
Something around show jumping or cross country riding… I saw the Riders film adapted from Jilly Cooper’s book when I was a teen and I wish someone would write that kind of drama filled soapy romance again.
Dick Francis’s novels set in the steeplechasing world is one of the best in the sports genre. They are mainly mysteries but always with parallel love stories which made them doubly enjoyable. Great writing style too. His opening lines are truly incomparable. He wrote between late 60s into early oughts and he wrote about forty novels set in the horse racing world. I can read and indeed do read them again and again.
Francis’s racing mysteries are great. Not all of them have romances, but they were all interesting thrillers.
John Francome is the next best racing mystery author to Dick Francis.
Having worked as an exercise rider at various east coast racetracks in my twenties, it’s hard for me to read horseracing based fiction. Not because the author doesn’t get it right so much as I know what goes on behind the scenes and it’s a hard and too often abusive life for the horses. And after their usefulness is ended, approximately 10,000 with be sold for slaughter each year. I’m still involved with horses and from what I’ve seen the past two years in the news, the show and dressage industry on an international level has too many trainers and riders using abusive methods as well. Thankfully there are ongoing discussions within the industry that we can all hope leads to changes.
This is a rather long article about the present state of horse racing industry which I thought you might find interesting. Beware, it is very long but worth reading. It is a gift article from me, so no paywall.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/opinion/horse-racing-government-subsidies.html?unlocked_article_code=1.004.6c_i.ZQaqZAfEw0Mk&smid=url-share
Thank you! I didn’t realize how much money was going to prop up horse racing. Tehre must be some very powerful lobbies involved. I have to say I agree with the article that it just needs to stop. We’re subsidizing an ultimately inhumane industry.
I read the same piece at the NYT this morning. It’s unbelievable how nasty the business is. Not only are we subsidizing the abuse of animals and the hiring of immigrants who are being economically terrorized by wealthy owners at empty race tracks (because, except for the Kentucky Derby, no one is actually watching any of the races), but we’re doing it in conjunction with online gaming, to the detriment of addictive personalities all over the U.S. What a mess!
Pippa Grant is currently two books into a series with a rugby team in her Copper Valley setting (next book due out in May). I read The Roommate Mistake recently and it had zero content devoted to actual play.
For those that read M/M romance, Jax Calder’s Sporting Secrets trilogy has New Zealand rugby players with on page playing and I highly recommend it.
I likes that series as well – they were all solid B reads for me.
I like sports romances when they are like the SEP/Rachel Gilbson books: the sport plays a peripheral role in the novels and the focus is on the love story adding a nice sense of humor. For different sports, I loved the Nascar mystery/romance series Janet Evanovich wrote back in the early nones – Metro Girl and Motor Mouth. The novels only slightly touch on the sport but they do a nice job of showing how Hooker’s life is impacted by being a sports celebrity. And they are hilarious! For additional sports, I think baseball and basketball would be great to see more of. I believe it would make for some interesting angst/depth to hear how baseball players feel watching their sport decline in popularity. Olympians would make for some awesome reading, too. figureskating, skiing, bobsledding, etc.
I think what Rachel Gibson did so well was tie in the fortunes of the sport with those of the leads.
My favorite recent sports romance is Bench Player which does that as well.
The first book I read by Ruthie Knox was Ride with Me which features a cross-country bike ride. I really enjoyed the rugby series London Legends by Kat Latham and other rugby romances by Amy Andrews and ones by Penny Reid and L.H. Cosway. But other than hockey romances, I haven’t read too many sports romances lately. Thanks for your recs, though, I’ll try those! (Maybe I’ll do a reread of Sarina Bowen’s winter sports series (and I think it was her first series too) Gravity). And for something different in sports romances, I’d recommend Tamsen Parker’s Snow & Ice Games series.
I love Ride with Me!
I’m happy to see the mention of two of my favorite series, London Legends and Sydney Smoke Rugby (which is not exactly rugby but very similar to it). I totally recommend them.
Thanks Bona, we have good taste!
It’s rugby league not rugby union. Both of which are different to Australian (rules) football.
My husband and I like to watch Australian football. It’s fast paced and less brutal than American football, and although I still can’t grasp all the rules, the eye candy is a plus. I know I’ve read at least one Aussie rules football romance, but I can’t remember the title now.
I love sports romances but the majority of what I have read is hockey. For American sports, I have read some football and baseball romances but never seem to see much basketball romance. Not sure why that is. The only one that comes to mind is Sarina Bowen’s short story Blonde Date (M/F) – the hero is a basketball player but I wouldn’t consider it a sports romance as none of the storyline has to do with the sport. I think there is a small amount of soccer and rugby romances out there too.
For something less common, if you read M/M then I highly recommend Keira Andrew’s Cold War and Kiss and Cry, both of which feature Olympic figure skaters.
I haven’t read it but I remember now that Kennedy Ryan’s Hoops series (M/F) features basketball players.
Yes it does.
Jay Hogan’s Auckland Med series has 2 rugby-based books, one featuring an All Blacks player (Between the Lines) and Against the Grain features wheelchair rugby.
Avery Cockburn’s Glasgow Lads series are football romances (as in ‘real’ football!) – and I can think of a couple of other series featuring footie players.
But honestly, I don’t really care what the sport is as long as there’s not too much of it, because I’m not a sorts fan in any shape or form. I enjoyed some of KD Casey’s recent baseball romances but there was so much detail I didn’t understand that I just glazed over and skimmed those bits! While the romance in Rebecca J. Caffrey’s Pole Position didn’t quite work for me, she did a great job of capturing the workings of the F1 circuit. There needs to be enough of the sport for it to be convincing and not so much that it bores me!
It’s great to see how different we readers are. In a sports romance I want both parts, the sport and the romance, connected, intertwined, not something that happens in the background with no relevance in the main characters relationship or the plot. That’s why I want it to be accurate. I follow several sports, tennis, climbing and rugby among them, and I want to see it well described. I expect accuracy in the representation of the sport itself, its rules, calendar, the legends of the sport, the way it’s played. If it’s a lazy representation, I feel they do not respect the sport or the pro athletes.
Thinking about the sports I love to see or I practice, I’d love to see more rugby, tennis, runners, mountain climbing and rock climbing in romance.
But only if the authors know anything about the sport. Otherwise, it would be a very frustrating reading.
I recommend two rugby series, London Legends by Kat Latham is the first one. I just loved her books, it’s so sad that she does not write anymore. The second is not exactly rugby, but something a little bit different, ‘Australian Football’. Amy Andrews has written about it in her series Sydney Smoke Rugby. There’s also a multi-author series in which the athletes are female, Women of W.A.R. about this strange Aussie rugby/football. Amy Andrews has written a novel of this series.
And I’d love to see more tennis but the problem is that they should know a little bit of how it goes. I remember the mistakes I saw in ‘The Match’ by Winter Renshaw. The only real tennis-player mentioned by name was Nadal, and totally out of character. Supposedly, the main character had a kind of fisticuff with him, which is something absolutely incongruent woth the real person. Nobody who has followed Nadal would believe that. He has never been violent, never even broken a tennis racket on court. And it was obvious that the author does not know anything about the calendar, that you start in Australia, when you do matches in North America and when in Europe, when they play each surface, hardcourt first, then clay games in Monaco, Barcelona, Madrid or Rome before playing Roland Garros and then grass court tournaments before Wimbledon. And back to hardcourts after that, just before the US Open.I’d love to see runners and rock climbers (Rachel Grant did it very well in her R. S. Grant book ‘The buried hours’).
One of my favorite Australian football series is Sean Kennedy’s m/m Tigers and Devils, for those interested in that sport. Really well written. I know nothing about that particular game and I don’t remember that impacting my ability to enjoy the story. What was important was how important the various team fandoms are. In fact, it is what sets up the “meet cute” between the athlete MC and the “arty nerd” MC in the book.
I read the first book in the series and I loved It. But I did not read the following books, as It was about the same couple.
Cricket would be a novel change.
Today, as France and Ireland play the Six Nations and decide which one will probably win the tournament, I would like to use this post to reflect on romance and sports.
I think sport is part of our daily lives. We spend a lot of time talking about it, or watching it, or playing it. So it should appear in a contemporary novel even if it is not a sports romance.
Novels set in the United States may mention, in passing, that a certain character is watching the Super Bowl.
But when they are set in other places, this is often ignored. I have always been surprised that contemporary novels set in Ireland or Scotland written by American authors, usually omit any reference to rugby, for example. It seems to me, for this and other reasons, that they are set their romances in an imaginary Ireland or Scotland, not the real one.
Just a thought.
I think that too–the Europe of most romances does not feel very lived in.