HOUSE MEMORIAL 93

51st legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - second session, 2014

INTRODUCED BY

Antonio "Moe" Maestas

A MEMORIAL

REQUESTING THE GOVERNOR TO CONDUCT AN EXPLORATION OF THE POSSIBILITIES FOR BRINGING A MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER TEAM TO NEW MEXICO AND BUILDING A SOCCER STADIUM TO HOUSE THE SOCCER TEAM.

     WHEREAS, soccer, usually called "football" worldwide, is the most popular sport around the world, with billions of ardent fans; and

     WHEREAS, soccer is rapidly gaining popularity in the United States, with the Nielsen television ratings company reporting that a total of twenty-four million three hundred thousand viewers in the United States watched the 2010 world cup final soccer championship between Spain and the Netherlands; and

     WHEREAS, in 2013, twenty thousand one hundred forty-one children in New Mexico played soccer; and

     WHEREAS, in terms of participants, soccer is four times more popular than American football in New Mexico; and

     WHEREAS, for the past decade, the university of New Mexico Lobos men's soccer team has ranked in the top fifteen for attendance and recently made the national collegiate athletic association final four; and

     WHEREAS, Albuquerque now has its own minor league soccer team, the Albuquerque Sol; and 

     WHEREAS, more than nine thousand people attended the 2013 international professional soccer match, at the university of New Mexico stadium, between the Colorado Rapids team of major league soccer and Mexico's first division Santos Laguna team; and

     WHEREAS, in the major league soccer association, or "MLS", there are nineteen active, and two pending, soccer clubs throughout the United States and Canada, with the closest clubs to New Mexico being the Denver-based Colorado Rapids and the Dallas-area FC Dallas club; and

     WHEREAS, several former university of New Mexico Lobos soccer players now play in the MLS; and

     WHEREAS, the journal Sports Business Daily reported in November 2013 that the average MLS franchise is now worth one hundred three million dollars ($103,000,000), an increase of more than one hundred seventy-five percent in the past five years;

     NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that Governor Susana Martinez be requested to lead a dialogue with representatives from the department of finance and administration, the economic development department, the tourism department, the athletics community, the state's chambers of commerce, the bureau of business and economic research at the university of New Mexico, New Mexico business owners and other experts to explore the feasibility of building a soccer-specific stadium with the hope of establishing an MLS team in New Mexico in the future; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the governor, the mayor of Albuquerque and the chair of the Bernalillo county commission.

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