Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, tweeted that he was buying English football club Manchester United Plcwithout providing any details.
Musk has a history of being unusual and posting irreverent tweets. It remains unclear if he intends to pursue the acquisition of Manchester United, one of the most famous names in world football but currently in crisis on the pitch amid fans’ calls to change owners. angry or not.
“I am buying Manchester United ur [sic] welcome,” Musk said in a tweet on Tuesday. The northern England-based team has more than 32 million followers on its main Twitter account, and Musk’s tweet garnered 220,000 ‘likes’ on the platform within two hours.
Musk’s post was a follow-up to an earlier tweet: “Just to be clear, I support the left half of the Republican Party and the right half of the Democratic Party!” The left and right halves are the positions of the football squad.
The comments by the chief executive of electric car giant Tesla come as United, a record 20-time British champion, suffer from an opening nightmare for the 2022-2023 season.
As one of the best known and most widely supported teams in the world, United are bottom of the Premier League after losing their first two games, having failed in the past two months to rebuild. a squad that had a relatively poor record last season.
Its New York-listed stock has fallen 24% in the past 12 months, valuing it at just over $2 billion.
Manchester United is controlled by the American Glazer family. Neither the Florida family nor Musk immediately responded to requests for comment.
Complaints from fans and experts about a change of ownership in the three-time European Cup winners, the most prestigious club competition in the global game, are growing amid long time scene without winning major titles.
In its annual ranking this year, Forbes rates Manchester UnitedWith a huge global fan base, the football club is the third most valuable in the world, worth $4.6 billion, just behind the two Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Britain’s The Daily Mirror reported last year that the Glazers, who have faced widespread fan resistance to their management rights since buying the club in 2005 for 790 million pounds ($957 million), are available for sale but only if they are offered for sale in excess of £4 billion ($4.85 billion).
Fan dissatisfaction with the Glazers’ lack of ambition to bring in top players has increased after the club finished sixth in the Premier League last season – while rivals Manchester City won the title. second signal in a row.
Controversial tweets
Musk has a history of unconventional actions and comments, making it sometimes difficult to tell if he’s joking.
“Next, I buy Coca-Cola to get the cocaine back,” Musk tweeted on August 27, two days after Twitter’s board approved. Unsolicited offer – announced on his Twitter feed – to buy the company. Musk is currently trying to get out of the $44 billion deal to acquire the social media company, the company took him to court.
Musk’s tweets about potential acquisitions have caused him to come under fire with US regulators in the past.
In 2018, he tweeted that there was “guaranteed financing” for a $72 billion deal to take Tesla private, but did not proceed with an offer. Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million in civil penalties — and Musk stepped down as Tesla Chairman — to address claims by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Musk misled investors.
Musk’s ambitions range from colonizing Mars to creating a new sustainable energy economy, and in the process he built the world’s most valuable car company, the maker of electric vehicles. Tesla, the rocket company SpaceX and a host of smaller companies. One was a tunnel builder named Boring Company.
Forbes estimates his fortune at $270 billion.
