The Los Angeles Lakers basketball team has returned the $4.6 million in federal relief funding that they received as part of the most recent coronavirus spending bill, according to CNN.
A spokesperson for the team confirmed that the team had received the money as part of the Payroll Protection Program, but that “once we found out the funds from the program had been depleted, we repaid the loan so that financial support would be directed to those most in need.”
The Lakers are the latest high-profile business to publicly announce the refunding of federal coronavirus aid, following others such as the fast food chain Shake Shack, as well as Harvard University and other Ivy League schools.
The PPP funds had initially run out after the first coronavirus spending bill, which was worth $2.2 trillion overall. Congress subsequently passed another bill, signed into law by President Trump, which allocated an additional $480 billion exclusively for small businesses that have been negatively impacted by the economic shutdown due to the spread of the virus.