A sports city with a full calendar
Toronto rarely has a quiet night. From October the Maple Leafs dominate conversation, the Raptors fill the winter, the Blue Jays take over from April, and Toronto FC and the Argonauts carry the summer and fall. Add the Sceptres in the PWHL and the city's new WNBA team, the Tempo, and it's entirely possible to have three local games on at once.
That's where a single IPTV subscription earns its keep. Instead of juggling separate apps for different networks, with different blackout rules, you open one guide and choose the game. On a multi-screen plan, one person can watch the Leafs in the living room while someone else follows the Jays on a tablet, and neither stream interrupts the other.
- National and regional sports networks for hockey, basketball and baseball
- US sports channels for rival markets and national broadcasts
- Soccer channels for TFC and the European leagues the city follows
- Event feeds for big fights and pay-per-view cards
For a deeper look at hockey without cable, see our NHL guide; for basketball, the NBA in Canada guide.
Local news and Toronto-made TV
Toronto is where much of Canada's English-language television is produced, and the lineup reflects that: the main national networks, the city's 24-hour local news channels, business news for Bay Street and the specialty channels that come out of the city's studios. If you commute and miss the 6 p.m. news, catch-up on supported channels lets you watch it at 8 instead.
TV for a city that speaks 180 languages
Roughly half of Torontonians were born outside Canada, and TV from home is one of the first things many families look for. The international section is organised by language and region, with a particularly deep selection for the communities that shape the GTA:
| Community | What you'll find |
|---|---|
| Chinese (Markham, Scarborough, Richmond Hill) | Mandarin and Cantonese news, drama and variety |
| South Asian (Brampton, Scarborough, Mississauga) | Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu and Gujarati channels, plus cricket |
| Filipino (Bathurst & Wilson, Scarborough) | Tagalog news and entertainment |
| Portuguese & Brazilian (Little Portugal, Dufferin Grove) | Portuguese news, telenovelas and football |
| Italian (Woodbridge, Little Italy) | Italian networks and Serie A coverage |
| Persian, Arabic, Somali and more | News and entertainment from across the Middle East and Africa |
Can't see your language here? Ask us before you order and we'll check.
Internet in Toronto: what actually matters
Toronto has some of the best home internet in the country. Rogers and Bell cover almost every street, fibre is common, and independent providers such as TekSavvy, Start.ca and Beanfield (in many condo buildings) offer good value. Any of them is fast enough for IPTV; even a modest 50 Mbps plan handles two HD screens.
The bigger issue in Toronto is Wi-Fi, not speed. In a condo tower, your router competes with dozens of neighbours' networks on the same channels. A few fixes help:
- Use the 5 GHz network for your TV or streaming stick, not 2.4 GHz.
- Place the router in the open, not inside the builder's media cabinet by the door.
- Run a short ethernet cable to the TV if they're in the same room.
- In a house, a two-piece mesh system fixes most basement and third-floor dead spots.
Our internet speed guide has more detail.
Leaving Rogers or Bell TV
If your TV currently comes from Rogers or Bell, keep the internet and cancel only the TV portion. Check whether you're in a contract term first, return any rented boxes to a store (and keep the receipt), and ask what your internet will cost on its own. It's often less of a saving than the TV bill suggests, but it's still a saving. Our cancel cable guide has a script for that call.