Toronto still loves a night out, but the entertainment menu is much bigger now. The interesting part is what was kept, what got added and where Toronto urban dwellers spend their time.
There was a time when a decent Saturday night in Toronto meant leaving the house. You might catch a band at the Horseshoe, see a movie, watch the Leafs somewhere with a beer in your hand or spend too much money at HMV on Yonge. Most of those things are still around in one form or another, but now they compete with an entire evening’s entertainment sitting on the phone in your pocket. That’s a pretty big change for anyone old enough to remember lining up to buy a CD. Or a cassette tape.
The Screen Became the Venue
The television is still sitting in the living room, but it no longer decides what you watch at eight o’clock. By 2025, 33% of Canadian households subscribed only to streaming services, up from 29% a year earlier. Another 44% had both traditional television and online audiovisual services.
That changes the way the tube is used these days. Miss the first ten minutes and you haven’t missed anything; start the show when you’re ready. The same screen can take you from a hockey game to a movie without much thought about which channel owns what.
The phone has pushed that freedom even further. In the first quarter of 2025, people in Ontario and Quebec spent 1.9 billion hours watching social-media video, compared with 875 million hours on subscription streaming. Television still gets plenty of attention, but it now has a lot more competition for your evening.
Gaming Added Another Choice
Games have claimed a bigger piece of that screen time too. Canada now has 23 million gamers, with an average age of 34, so the old picture of gaming as something teenage boys do in a basement is badly out of date.
Ontario added another digital option when its regulated online gambling market opened in April 2022. During 2024-25, the market recorded $82.7 billion in wagers and $2.9 billion in gaming revenue from more than 2.6 million active player accounts. Casino games accounted for 84% of those wagers.
More choice also means more homework when a new operator arrives. Casino.ca helps Canadians find a new casino online by comparing recently launched sites on practical details including game libraries, payment methods, withdrawal times, bonuses and mobile features.
That puts online casino play in the same broad entertainment story. A form of leisure that once required a physical trip now fits onto the same device already carrying your music or games.
Music Never Stopped Moving
Music may be the easiest change to spot when you remember the old record shops. Canada passed 3 billion on-demand audio streams in a single week for the first time in December 2025. Recorded music brought in $957.9 million that year, with streaming responsible for $747 million.
There is serious money attached to keeping that digital listening legal. Record companies representing artists including Adele and Kendrick Lamar took action against Musi, alleging that the app built its service around unauthorized access to music videos and advertising revenue. Streaming is no side business when that much listening happens online.
Toronto still gives you good reasons to hear music in a room with other people. The 2026 Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony at Massey Hall inducted The Tragically Hip and Feist, with performances from City and Colour and Our Lady Peace among the night’s attractions.
Streaming has made recorded music easier to reach. It hasn’t made Massey Hall redundant.
Toronto Still Likes Going Out
A phone full of entertainment is handy, but Toronto continues to do very good business when people get off the couch. The city receives more than 28.2 million visitors a year, and those visitors spent $9.1 billion in Toronto during 2025. The resulting economic impact was estimated at $13.5 billion.
Big numbers tell one part of that story. A night at a neighbourhood venue tells another.
Hayden Desser played the Revue Cinema on Roncesvalles on September 30, performing alone with a piano, guitars and harmonica. The set mixed newer work with songs such as Bad As They Seem and Trees Lounge, bringing music associated with the 1990s into one of Toronto’s oldest surviving cinemas.
That is a useful picture of entertainment in Toronto in 2026. You can spend the afternoon listening to Hayden through headphones and still buy a ticket to hear him that evening. Digital access hasn’t removed the appeal of being there when something happens.
More Ways to Spend an Evening
Toronto hasn’t traded its old entertainment habits for digital ones. It has added streaming, online games and on-demand audio to a city that still turns up for concerts and nights at the cinema.
The biggest difference is choice. Your evening can start on a phone and end at Massey Hall, or stay on the couch from beginning to end. For anyone who remembers planning a night around television schedules and record-store closing times, that’s quite a change.
