TikTok is rebranding ice hockey rinks as ‘boy aquariums’

“There are boy aquariums all over the United States,” a TikTok creator explains in a recent post.  

The video then shows a clip of someone carrying a bucket filled with hockey pucks. “Come feed the fish at the boy aquarium with me,” the closed captions read. The person tosses the pucks onto the rink as players skate past. 

On TikTok, ice hockey arenas have been rebranded as “boy aquariums.” Videos show women tapping against the battered Plexiglas, filming the players warming up and encouraging others to go on a girls’ night to the rink.

The players themselves are in on the joke. Earlier this year, the official TikTok of the Canadian junior ice hockey team Moncton Wildcats posted: “So we’re calling this the boy aquarium now?” as the players skate around the enclosed rink. Another video, posted last week, shows the University of Cincinnati men’s ice hockey team on a field trip to an actual aquarium. 

Fans are encouraging others to go and watch the sport. “You look happier,” the on-screen text reads on one clip, “Thanks, I went to the boy aquarium with my besties.”

The National Hockey League’s fan base overall is young, diverse, and online. Over half, 54%, are under the age of 44, according to Sport Radar, the second-youngest among the four major U.S. leagues. And the new legion of overwhelmingly female fans filling stadiums can be traced, in part, back to the popularity of BookTok’s favorite “ice-hockey romance” genre.  

The uninitiated may be surprised to learn there are thousands of novels in this niche subcategory, the most popular being Hannah Grace’s romance bestseller Icebreaker, which went viral in 2022 with the story of a competitive figure skater and hockey team captain forced to share a rink (cue romantic entanglement). 

Capitalizing on the hype, social-media teams regularly publish videos of players reading “spicy” chapters of Icebreaker or Pucking Around, another hockey romance bestseller by Emily Rath. 

“Heated Rivalry”, currently airing on HBO Max, has only added to the hockey fever, spawning thousands of reaction videos on TikTok and Instagram. With its steamy gay hockey romance storyline, based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels, the Canadian import has topped the streaming charts following the release of episode 4. 

While tongue-in-cheek, the “boy aquarium” trend also risks playing into harmful stereotypes of female sports fans. The “puck bunny” insult has long been levelled at young female hockey fans, just as groupie has historically been used to belittle female music fans. 

Ice Hockey UK and The Elite League recently condemned a Financial Times article about British romance readers discovering ice hockey. “The tone of the article is not just absurd and inaccurate in relation to ice hockey, but also to women who watch sport in general,”  Ice Hockey UK CEO Henry Staelens said in a statement. “Something that shouldn’t even be a talking point in today’s society.”

Female sports fans have long fought to be taken seriously, and social media trends – while harmless on the surface – risk erasing their passion and knowledge of the sport, replaced instead by a backdrop for a fictional trope.  

Whether lifelong fans, or recent BookTok converts, ice hockey as an industry is heating up. The NHL league’s 32 clubs’ average valuation climbed 15% year-over-year to $2.2 billion, Forbes recently reported, more than double where they were just three years ago. 

While some may come for the fictional hockey players, they stay for the sport. 

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