Everything was going great Sunday on December 27, 2020, and then boom I saw a report surface from the NY Post stating that the Pittsburgh Penguins received a loan from the CARES Act in the amount of $4.82 million.
What’s horrible about this decision is that the Penguins are valued at $650 million, and they are the first team of any of the four major sports (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) in the United States to receive this type of loan. The Penguins had this to say following the report surfacing:
“With our arena being ordered closed since March and without any event revenue, we requested that our landlord, the Sports & Exhibition Authority (SEA), consider a temporary deferral of our annual rent payment due in September. This request was denied, accordingly, we borrowed $4.8M under the CARES Act program in mid-August and applied the funds to our $6.1M September rent payment to the SEA, which was used by the public agency to make its required bond payment.”
This just makes the Penguins look bad in my opinion. There are struggling restaurants, essential workers that are barely putting food on the table, and people in general just suffering from the pandemic. Tons of restaurants throughout the Philadelphia region have closed, or are temporarily shutdown due to the pandemic. Some businesses have applied for these loans and some have been denied without a reason, according to an article from the Washington Post. One percent of businesses that applied for this loan under the CARES Act were denied in early April of 2020.
Regardless, of what the Penguins used the money for. The fact remains that some struggling Americans are not afforded the same loan that the Penguins received, and this is a black eye to the Penguins. It’s a bad look to those that have applied for this and have been denied. The system is broke somewhere and should be fixed immediately.
the CARES Act money should be deducted from the Penguins salary cap.
Your entire corrupt city stole a presidential election!