Elon Musk Says He’s “Buying Manchester United”

In a tweet thread tonight talking about his political leanings, Elon Musk casually dropped a Tweet proclaiming he was buying Manchester United.

Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 17, 2022

Many news outlets were quick to point out what Reuters said, namely that Musk has a history of “irreverent Tweets” – which is a nice way of saying potentially committing securities fraud via his Twitter account in a multitude of ways. 

But the purchase of the well known English football club doesn’t seem too far out of reach for Musk, should he really want to buy it.

The club, which is publicly traded (although Elon may not know that) and has been underperforming badly over the last year, only has a market cap of about $2 billion. This means Musk could easily offer a heavy premium, in cash, to try and get the deal pushed through.

It could be even easier now that Musk has sold tens of billions of dollars worth Tesla stock over the last 2 weeks. Many people assumed that these sales were going to be used to settle his lawsuit with Twitter. Several billion dollars in cash for the purchase of Manchester United could have easily been part of Musk’s planned sales. 

“To fund the purchase, I have to sell another $50BN in TSLA stock… but this will be the last sale, honest” https://t.co/2lFuXRZVWk

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 17, 2022

Additionally, it was noted that 30,000 $14 call options with September expiration mysteriously went off last week ahead of the rumor.

From four days ago: https://t.co/0FboxGRWQM

— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) August 17, 2022

On the other hand, it would probably take Elon about one month to demand any contract be voided after he discovers that all 11 ManU players on the field are merely bots.

1 month later: “after extensive due diligence, i am pulling the offer having discovered they have 11 bots on the field at any given moment” https://t.co/2lFuXRZVWk

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 17, 2022

Of course, when it’s all said and done, it’s all just another “pun” by the world’s richest man, but if anyone else of his standing, not to mention financial wherewithall, had said the same thing – whether seriously or in jest – there would be consequences. For Elon, however, there never are.