Canadians can finally legally live stream Game of Thrones without cable

Thanks to a redesign of Bell Media’s streaming service, Crave, Game of Thrones fans in Canada will be able to watch season 8 live online without a cable subscription.

It might be time of Game of Thrones final season, but for fans in Canada, it is time for a very important first. The ability to watch Game of Thrones live online (legally) without having to buy an expensive cable package.

Previously, the only way to watch Thrones live was to get HBO Canada, which was only available as part of the The Movie Network package. But, in November, Bell redesigned its streaming service and made The Movie Network, Showtime, Stars and HBO a $10 CAD add on to CraveTV, now just Crave.

For the first time, there was a live TV option on Crave and new episodes would be added to the streaming service weekly for the series airing on the add on channels. Crave is basically Netflix plus HBO Now. And all because the rights situation for most TV shows in Canada means streaming looks a lot different north of the border.

In Canada, there are two big telecom companies, Bell and Rogers. They own everything when it comes to TV, for example, HBO is a Bell-owned channel in Canada. It is basically the exact same as the US version, but it is required to air a certain amount of Canadian content.

For a while, HBO shows just aired on The Movie Network and when it become its own channel, the two cable companies decided to make more money by keeping HBO as a package with TMN. And because of it being owned by Bell, when HBO GO and HBO Now launch in America, they were unavailable in Canada.

In the late 2000s, Bell and Rogers launched their own streaming services to rival upstart Netflix. Rogers had Shomi and Bell had Crave TV. Seeing as Netflix was the only streaming service to offer movies out of the three, it stuck around and eventually got less awful as it worked out better rights deals (but that is a whole other story). Shomi folded, but Crave survived and for a while Crave and Netflix were the only streaming options in Canada.

Bell had the rights to so many big name shows from America and it controlled how Canadians could watch them, Game of Thrones being the biggest example of this control. Past seasons wouldn’t be available to stream until after the season ended, limiting legal ways to watch to paying for HBO.

As a result, illegal download numbers for Game of Thrones in Canada only kept raising as the show gained popularity. Bell and HBO started sending emails to people who torrented Game of Thrones to scare them out of downloading the episodes. But, the emails don’t have any legal weight.

In true Canadian technology fashion, Bell is finally offering a way to watch Game of Thrones online without cable with just six episodes left in the entire series. So, it will be interesting to see if people change their habits for the final season. The new Crave with HBO is $20 CAD a month, which is on the high side, luckily it has more to offer beyond Game of Thrones.