How to watch the NFL in Canada

To watch the NFL in Canada you need the channels that carry it and a way to get them. In recent seasons CTV, TSN and RDS (in French) have carried the broadcast games, and DAZN has streamed every game. You can get them through cable or satellite, a DAZN subscription, or an IPTV subscription that brings those channels to your TV over your internet connection.

That is the short answer. The long one matters because NFL Sundays in Canada have a few traps that catch people every season. The game moves between channels from week to week. Kickoff is at a different time in every province. And the moment you want two games on two TVs, your setup has to handle both. We see all of this on support as an IPTV Canada service, so this guide covers each part, in the order you will run into it.

What are the ways to watch the NFL in Canada?

There are four: cable or satellite with a sports tier, a DAZN subscription, an antenna for the games CTV airs, and an IPTV subscription that carries TSN, CTV, RDS and DAZN Canada. They differ in cost, in how many games you get, and in how much setting up you do yourself.

Which one suits you depends on how much football you watch and what else is on your TV. If you want the NFL and nothing else, DAZN on its own may be enough. If you also want hockey, the local news and the rest of Canadian TV, you are choosing between cable and IPTV, and the price gap between those two is the reason this guide exists.

What does cable cost for the NFL in Canada?

For a household that wants sports, cable or satellite in Canada costs about $1,392 to $2,370 in the first year once you add the base package, two rented boxes and a sports tier. The sports tier is the part that adds TSN, which carries most of the prime-time NFL games.

The box rental line deserves a moment. Renting a cable box for eleven years costs more than the box. The box does not get better during those eleven years. With IPTV there is no box to rent. You use a streaming stick, a smart TV app or a box you already own. Our IPTV versus cable cost guide goes through the full comparison line by line.

A fair comparison also needs the cheap end of cable. If you only want the games CTV airs, an antenna costs less than either. It just will not show you Monday night, because that game is usually on TSN.

Which channel is the NFL on in Canada?

In recent seasons the NFL in Canada has been split across Bell Media's channels. CTV has carried many Sunday afternoon games, the playoffs and the Super Bowl, TSN the prime-time and other selected games, and RDS the French broadcasts. DAZN has streamed every game. The channel for any one game changes week to week.

The table shows the usual pattern. Treat it as a guide, not a promise. Broadcast deals change, and the networks move games around, so check the official NFL schedule and the TSN or CTV listings in the week of the game.

Two things trip people up. First, TSN has five regional feeds, TSN 1 to 5, and a game on "TSN" may be on any of them. Second, Sunday afternoons have several games at the same time, and only some of them are on CTV or TSN. The rest are on DAZN. If your team is not in the game CTV or TSN picked, DAZN Canada is usually where you will find it.

On our lineup all of these are in one list. TSN 1 to 5, CTV, RDS and RDS2 and DAZN Canada sit side by side in the app, so finding the game means checking a few channels in one place rather than switching apps. Our guide to Canadian IPTV channels explains how the TSN feeds work and how the rest of the lineup is laid out.

What time do NFL games start in Canada?

The NFL schedules games in Eastern time. Sunday's early games kick off at 1:00 p.m. Eastern, the late games at 4:05 or 4:25 p.m., Sunday Night Football at 8:20 p.m. and the Monday and Thursday games at 8:15 p.m. In Newfoundland add an hour and a half. In British Columbia take off three hours.

The table is the standard pattern. Some games are scheduled at other times, especially late in the season and on holidays, so take the time from the official schedule for any game that matters. The late Sunday game uses 4:25 p.m. Eastern here. When it starts at 4:05, take twenty minutes off each column.

Out west, the prime-time games are an easy watch. A Monday game starts at 5:15 p.m. in Vancouver, so it finishes before most people go to bed. In St. John's it starts at 9:45 p.m., which makes catch-up the next morning a sensible plan. More on catch-up below.

Saskatchewan, Yukon and the places that do not change their clocks

Most of Saskatchewan stays on Central Standard Time all year, and Yukon keeps one time all year too. Because the rest of the country moves its clocks, NFL kickoff times in those places shift by an hour partway through the season, even though nothing local has changed.

• Most of Saskatchewan. From the start of the season until the first Sunday in November, the early Sunday game kicks off at 11:00 a.m., the same as Alberta. After the rest of the country falls back, it kicks off at 12:00 p.m., the same as Manitoba.
• Yukon. Until the clocks change, Yukon lines up with British Columbia and the early game is at 10:00 a.m. After that it lines up with Alberta, and the early game is at 11:00 a.m.
• Lloydminster. The city follows Alberta time on both sides of the border, so it shifts with Alberta.
• A few communities in British Columbia also keep one time all year. Most of them line up with Yukon, so use the Yukon pattern above.

The clocks fell back on the first Sunday of November this year, so if you are in Saskatchewan or Yukon, the kickoff times for the rest of the season are an hour later than they were in October. the National Research Council's official time-zone page lists which regions do what. The same shift catches the TV guide in some player apps, which is why we suggest checking the app's time zone setting after the change.

International games and holiday games

The NFL now plays several regular-season games abroad each season. The morning games in London usually kick off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern, which is 6:30 a.m. in British Columbia. Games in other countries can start at other times. For most of the West, the honest answer is catch-up. Our service keeps 7 days of it on most channels, so you can watch the game at a civilised hour without having recorded anything.

The other date to know is American Thanksgiving, on the fourth Thursday of November. There are usually three NFL games that day, starting around lunchtime Eastern and running into the evening. For Canadians it is an ordinary working Thursday, so catch-up is useful here too. Games on Christmas Day and the occasional Saturday late in the season follow the same idea: check the schedule, then decide whether to watch live or catch up later.

Do you want one team or every game?

Your answer changes what you need. If you follow one team, you need whichever channel carries that team each week, which moves between CTV, TSN and DAZN. If you want every game, you need DAZN or a lineup that includes DAZN Canada, because several Sunday games run at once and only some are on CTV or TSN.

Following one team is simpler than it sounds once you have the right channels in one place. Most weeks your team's game is on one of a handful of channels. The NFL can still move a game to a different slot late in the season, sometimes with less than two weeks' notice, so check the schedule each week from December on rather than relying on what you saw in September.

Following every game is a different hobby. A Sunday at 1:00 p.m. Eastern can have several games kicking off together. You either flick between them, follow the whiparound coverage that jumps between scoring drives, or put two games on two screens. The section on two games at once covers the practical side of that.

Which NFL teams are closest to Canada?

Canada has no NFL team of its own, so Canadian fans pick one, and geography plays a big part. The Buffalo Bills are the closest team to Southern Ontario. The Detroit Lions are across the river from Windsor. The Seattle Seahawks are the nearest team to Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.

• Buffalo Bills. Southern Ontario has followed the Bills for decades, from Niagara to the GTA. Our Buffalo Bills guide covers the Bills specifically.
• Detroit Lions. Windsor is so close to Detroit that the Lions feel like a local team, and many people in Southwestern Ontario grew up with them.
• Seattle Seahawks. The nearest team for British Columbia, and the obvious pick for a lot of fans in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island.

Plenty of Canadian fans follow teams nowhere near them, of course, and a lot of households have more than one team in the house. That is fine. The way you watch does not change with the team. You still find the game's channel for that week, then watch it on whichever screen you have.

Canadian broadcasts do not show only the nearest team. CTV and TSN pick games for a national audience, which is why the game you want can be on DAZN instead, even if you live near the team. Having all of them in one lineup is what saves you from hunting at kickoff.

Can you stream the NFL in Canada?

Yes. DAZN streams every game in Canada in its own app. TSN and CTV have their own apps too, and what you can watch on them depends on your TV provider or a direct subscription. An IPTV subscription streams the TSN, CTV, RDS and DAZN Canada channels into one app on your TV, alongside the rest of the lineup.

What we would steer you away from is the random stream link someone posts on social media at 12:58 p.m. on a Sunday. Those links tend to come with pop-ups and fake download buttons, they often stop working at kickoff when everyone opens them at once, and you have no idea who is running them. That is not a good way to spend a game you were looking forward to.

If you want to understand where IPTV itself stands in Canada, we have written about that plainly in our guide to whether IPTV is legal in Canada. It covers the difference between the technology, which is ordinary, and the question of who holds the rights to what you are watching. If you are new to the idea, what IPTV is explains how it works in plain terms first.

How to watch the NFL on IPTV, step by step

Check that the channels you need are on the lineup, start the free trial, install a player app on your TV, log in, and build an NFL favourites folder. Do it the day before a game, not at kickoff. Activation takes 10 to 15 minutes during the day, and the setup itself takes most people one evening.

1. Check the channels. Search the channel grid on our IPTV Canada page for TSN, CTV, RDS and DAZN. Each result shows its quality label. If a channel you want is not in the grid, ask in the live chat, because the grid is a sample, not the full list.
2. Start the free trial. No card is needed. It is there so you can see the picture on your own TV and your own internet before you pay anything.
3. Install a player app. On a Fire TV Stick, follow our Firestick installation guide. For a smart TV, a phone or another device, the setup guides cover each one.
4. Log in by copy and paste. Your login details arrive by email. Pasting them avoids the typos a TV remote makes easy, and it keeps the server address complete.
5. Build an NFL favourites folder. Add CTV, TSN 1 to 5, DAZN Canada, RDS and RDS2. On game day you open one folder instead of scrolling the full lineup.
6. Test on a Sunday you do not care about. Watch an early game end to end, ideally on the TV you will use for your team. If anything looks off, you have a week to sort it out with us.

That last step is the one people skip, and it is the one that saves the day. A first-time setup at 12:55 p.m. on the Sunday of a big game is how you end up watching the second quarter on your phone.

How do you watch two NFL games at once?

Each game you watch is one stream, so two games on two TVs need a plan that allows two devices at the same time, and roughly double the internet: about 24 Mbps for two Full HD games, plus 15 to 20 Mbps of headroom. A two-device yearly plan is $129. Three devices are $179 and four are $199.

Add 15 to 20 Mbps on top of each figure for everything else in the house: phones, laptops, a games console downloading an update. Those numbers are per stream and sit close to Netflix's published bandwidth requirements.

A few practical notes before your first two-game Sunday:

• Two screens can be any two devices. A TV and a tablet, two TVs, a TV and a laptop. The plan counts streams playing at the same moment, not where they play.
• Some player apps can show more than one channel on one screen. Each channel in that view still counts as one stream, so a two-game view on one TV needs a two-device plan.
• Close the stream you are not watching. A TV left playing in an empty room still uses one of your connections, and then the next one you open will not start.
• Wire the main TV. If one of the two screens has to be on Wi-Fi, make it the smaller one.

Our guide to using IPTV on multiple devices explains how connections are counted. The IPTV Canada subscription page lists every device tier and length side by side.

How to stop NFL games buffering on game day

Most NFL buffering at home comes from Wi-Fi, not from the internet plan. Football moves fast and fills the screen with detail, so it shows every hiccup in your home network. Wire the TV with an Ethernet cable, use 5 GHz Wi-Fi if you cannot, and keep the router out in the open.

The pattern we see most on support is a box on 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi in a busy condo building. The customer runs a speed test, it says 300 or 500 Mbps, and they conclude the stream is at fault. The speed was never the problem. Consistency was. Dozens of neighbouring networks share the same airwaves, and a fast-moving game is exactly where the gaps show. An Ethernet cable fixes it more often than anything else we suggest.

So here is our view, and we hold it firmly: your Wi-Fi is the problem, not your internet plan. Full HD needs 12 Mbps. If your speed test says 400, you are not short of bandwidth. You are short of a steady connection, and that is a Wi-Fi problem, not something a bigger plan from your internet provider will sort out.

The technical name for that unsteadiness is jitter: the variation in how long each packet takes to arrive. ITU-T G.1010 sets out how sensitive live video is to it. Your speed test does not show it, but your football game does.

1. Use Ethernet for the main TV. It is the single most effective change. A long flat cable along the baseboard is not pretty, but it works.
2. If you must use Wi-Fi, use 5 GHz. It is faster and less crowded than 2.4 GHz, though it does not travel as far through walls.
3. Move the router. Not in a cabinet, not behind the TV, not in the basement. Wi-Fi travels through drywall fine and through a brick chimney about as well as you would.
4. Pause the big downloads. Game consoles and computers like to update on Sunday afternoons.
5. Raise the buffer in the player app. A slightly bigger buffer absorbs small dips before you see them.
6. If one channel stutters, try another channel showing the same game. CTV and TSN sometimes carry the same game, and DAZN Canada usually has it too. A different channel is a different path.

If none of that helps, message us in the live chat while it is happening. Our buffering guide goes through the full checklist, and the internet speed guide shows how to work out what your household needs.

Watching the NFL in French

RDS has carried the French-language NFL broadcasts in Canada in recent seasons, with RDS2 as its overflow channel. Both are on our lineup: RDS in Full HD and RDS2 in HD. For a game RDS does not carry, DAZN Canada is the fallback, with the English commentary.

French-speaking fans are everywhere in Canada, not just in Quebec, and on our lineup the French channels come with every plan rather than as an add-on. If anyone in your house prefers the French commentary, put RDS and RDS2 in the same favourites folder as the English channels, so switching language mid-game is one press of the remote.

Our support works in English and French, so you can ask about the French sports channels in either language. The IPTV Quebec and IPTV Montreal pages cover the rest of the French lineup, including TVA Sports and the French news channels.

When is the Super Bowl on in Canada?

The Super Bowl is played on a Sunday in early February, with kickoff around 6:30 p.m. Eastern in recent years. In Canada it has aired on CTV, TSN and RDS. That puts kickoff at about 3:30 p.m. in British Columbia, 4:30 p.m. in Alberta, 7:30 p.m. in the Maritimes and 8:00 p.m. in Newfoundland.

In February, Saskatchewan lines up with Manitoba, so kickoff there is about 5:30 p.m., and Yukon lines up with Alberta at 4:30 p.m. The pre-game coverage starts hours earlier on all three channels, so you have plenty of time to get settled.

The Super Bowl is also the one game a year when a lot of people watch on more than one screen at once, and when a lot of guests are on your Wi-Fi. A few things help:

• Set everything up the day before. Same rule as any game, but more people are watching if it goes wrong.
• Wire the main TV. Guests' phones will crowd the Wi-Fi. A cable keeps the big screen out of that.
• Count your screens. If the game is on in the living room and the kitchen, that is two streams. Check your plan allows it before the guests arrive, not during the halftime show.
• Pick your channel early. CTV, TSN and RDS usually all carry it. Choose one and stay on it, rather than flicking between them during the game.

Missed the game? Use catch-up

Catch-up lets you watch a game after it aired without recording it. Our service has 7 days of catch-up on most channels. Open the channel in the TV guide, scroll back to the game and press play. It is ideal for the morning international games, late kickoffs in Atlantic Canada and Newfoundland, and Sunday shifts.

The hard part is not the technology. It is avoiding the score. If you plan to watch later, mute your team's notifications and stay off social media until you have watched.

"Most channels" is the honest phrase. If you rely on catch-up for a particular channel, test it during your free trial. Our catch-up TV guide shows how it works in the main player apps.

What about the CFL?

In recent seasons the CFL has been on TSN in Canada, with French coverage on RDS. The regular season runs through the summer and fall, and the Grey Cup is played in November. If your football year runs from June to February, the same TSN and RDS channels carry most of it.

The CFL and the NFL overlap from September to November, sometimes on the same day. A favourites folder with every TSN feed in it means you do not care which feed each league lands on. Check the CFL schedule for game times, and our NHL guide if hockey takes over your weeknights from October.

Who should not use IPTV for the NFL

We would rather tell you now than after you have paid. IPTV is the wrong choice for football if:

• Your internet drops often. IPTV depends on your connection. If it cuts out in the evenings, satellite or cable will serve you better, because neither stops when your internet does.
• You need NFL Network or NFL RedZone as channels in their own right. Neither is in the sample on our homepage. If either one is the reason you are buying, ask in the live chat before you subscribe. DAZN's own app includes RedZone.
• You want everything in one official app with no setup. DAZN on its own may suit you better if the NFL is all you watch.
• You will not have time to test before the game you care about. Start the free trial on a week that does not matter, not on the morning of the playoffs.

If none of that applies, check the channels, take the free trial on a quiet Sunday and have the setup sorted before your team's next game. Plans start at $19 for one month on one device, and the one-device yearly plan works out to $6.58 a month.

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