London’s diversification playbook vs. North Dakota’s gap

London, Ontario bet big on diversification. North Dakota didn’t, and its digital entertainment market shows exactly what that costs a jurisdiction

LONDON, ONTARIO JUST spent two years writing down, in painstaking civic-planning detail, something most mid-sized cities only ever do instinctively: it decided what it wants to be when oil, autos, or any single sector stops carrying the load. The result is London: The Centre of Opportunity the city’s 2026-2030 Economic Development Strategy, paired with the Downtown Reimagined 10-year plan. Neither document is thrilling reading. But the thinking underneath them is worth stealing.

That thinking got another airing at Manufacturing Matters 2026, the London Economic Development Corporation’s flagship conference, where the theme this year was blunt: Trade Diversification. One session, Building AI You Control, made a point that stuck with me more than anything else on the agenda. Most manufacturers, the panel argued, don’t own the AI tools running their shop floor. They rent them, from vendors, on vendor terms, with vendor risk baked in. Own versus rent isn’t just a manufacturing question. It’s the exact fork every jurisdiction hits when a new category of consumer spending shows up faster than its regulators can write rules for it.

Not every jurisdiction takes the fork the way London did. Look at North Dakota, whose legislature only convenes in odd-numbered years, which means any serious attempt to regulate real-money online gaming has to wait for a biennial window that may or may not prioritize it. Residents who want a regulated, locally licensed option for digital entertainment are left doing their own research, scanning lists of online casinos in North Dakota that operate offshore because there’s no local framework for them to operate within instead.

That’s the rent scenario, not the own scenario. And it’s costing the state more than it probably realizes.

The tax base problem London saw coming

North Dakota’s economy still leans hard on two pillars: agriculture and oil. A Harvard Political Review analysis laid out how exposed that narrow base makes the state when either commodity cycle turns sour, and that was before the most recent wave of price volatility. More recent reporting backs it up. KX News tracked agriculture GDP sliding in the state even as oil output holds roughly flat, which is exactly the kind of concentration risk a diversification strategy is supposed to catch early.

London had its own version of this problem a generation ago. Manufacturing and auto-parts supply chains dominated the local economy for decades. When that base wobbled, the city didn’t wait for a crisis to force its hand. It built a strategy document with downtown investment, trade diversification, and tech-sector support as explicit, funded priorities. Not aspirational language. Line items.

North Dakota hasn’t done the equivalent for its fastest-growing consumer category. Online entertainment spending nationally keeps climbing. TechJury’s 2026 spending data shows streaming, gaming, and online gambling-adjacent categories all expanding well ahead of traditional retail entertainment. That money is moving whether or not a state writes the rules for it. The only question is who captures the value once it moves.

Three sentences, two outcomes

Here’s the comparison that actually matters. When London wanted semiconductor and aerospace-adjacent investment, it didn’t sit back and hope. Invest Ontario worked directly with Canada Rocket Company to land a new testing facility at London International Airport this month, the kind of deal that doesn’t happen without a province and a city both showing up with a coherent pitch. Regulatory clarity was part of that pitch. Companies don’t build test facilities in jurisdictions where the rules might flip next session.

Compare that to a state legislature that meets every other year. A gaming operator weighing where to seek a license wants predictability above almost everything else. North Dakota’s biennial calendar is structurally incapable of giving it. So the demand for regulated spending doesn’t disappear. It just goes somewhere else, specifically to offshore operators who were never going to pay North Dakota a cent in licensing fees or state tax regardless of how the legislature eventually votes.

This isn’t a hypothetical drain. The sweepstakes-casino model, the closest thing to a regulatory workaround many U.S. Players have found, pulled in nearly $7.2 billion nationally through the first half of 2026 according to reporting from Deadspin, even with six states actively trying to ban the format. That’s demand finding a path around the absence of a framework, not because of one.

What “own the infrastructure” actually looks like

I’ve watched enough state gaming rollouts now to know the pattern. New Jersey built licensing infrastructure early and now collects meaningful tax revenue from an industry that would otherwise have gone entirely offshore. Michigan did something similar. Neither state pretended regulation would eliminate every offshore operator. They didn’t need to. Capturing even a reasonable share of in-state demand through licensed, taxed, locally accountable operators beats capturing zero percent because the market was left to sort itself out.

London’s downtown plan works on the same logic, just applied to commercial real estate instead of gaming licenses. The city isn’t betting it can force every resident downtown. It’s building the conditions, transit, mixed-use zoning, event programming, so that when people do choose to spend locally, there’s an actual local option built to receive that spending. Own the infrastructure, don’t just hope demand materializes on your terms.

A legislature that convenes once every two years can’t move at that speed on anything, let alone a category as fast-moving as online entertainment. That’s not a moral failing. It’s a structural one. But structural problems still have real costs, and in this case the cost shows up as tax revenue North Dakota will simply never see, routed instead through operators licensed in Malta or Curaçao who have zero obligation to reinvest a cent locally.

The diversification lesson doesn’t stop at manufacturing

What struck me most reading through the Manufacturing Matters 2026 program notes wasn’t the AI panel, interesting as that was. It was how consistently the diversification language applied outside its original context. Trade diversification. Revenue diversification. Infrastructure you own versus infrastructure you rent. None of that is manufacturing-specific. It’s a general theory of how a jurisdiction should think about any sector growing faster than its existing regulatory muscle can handle.

North Dakota isn’t going to solve this overnight, and I’m not pretending a biennial legislature is going to suddenly reorganize itself around digital entertainment policy. But the London comparison is useful precisely because it shows diversification isn’t a slogan. It’s a series of unglamorous choices, made consistently, about which categories of growth you want to shape versus which ones you’re content to watch pass through untaxed and unregulated.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does North Dakota’s legislative calendar matter for online gaming policy? The legislature meets in regular session only in odd-numbered years, so any bill to regulate real-money online gaming faces a narrow, infrequent window. Even where other states have moved quickly on iGaming frameworks, North Dakota’s structure makes rapid regulatory response close to impossible.

Is London, Ontario’s strategy actually comparable to a U.S. State’s gaming policy? Not directly, no. But the underlying principle, deliberately diversifying revenue sources rather than waiting for a crisis, transfers across sectors. London applied it to manufacturing and downtown investment; the same logic applies to any jurisdiction weighing whether to regulate fast-growing consumer spending.

What is the sweepstakes casino model mentioned in this piece? It’s a legal workaround used in states without regulated real-money online casinos, where players use virtual currency with sweepstakes-style redemption rules instead of direct cash wagering. It’s grown into a multi-billion dollar national market partly because of regulatory gaps like North Dakota’s.

Does diversification always mean more regulation? Not necessarily more, but more deliberate. London’s strategy isn’t about regulating everything; it’s about choosing, in advance, which growth areas the city wants to actively shape rather than passively observe. The same choice is available to any state legislature.

The broader point isn’t that North Dakota needs to rush a bill through next session. It’s that every year without a framework is another year of ceding ground to operators the state has no leverage over. Gambling involves risk. Please play responsibly and only wager what you can afford to lose. If you feel gambling is becoming a problem, visit BeGambleAware.org or call 1-800-GAMBLER.