Elon Musk announces on Twitter that he will buy Manchester United... and then says it was just a "joke"

Santiago Siri: Elon Musk is one of the Caesars of our time 1:15

(Reuters) --

Elon Musk, the world's richest person, said on Twitter on Wednesday that he was buying English soccer club Manchester United, later retracting it as a joke.

"No, this is a long running joke on Twitter. I'm not buying any sports equipment," Musk said, when asked by a user if he was serious about buying the club.

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Some four hours earlier, Musk had tweeted: "Bought Manchester United. You're welcome," without offering any details.

Some Manchester United fans, unhappy with their club's decline of late, had previously urged Musk on Twitter to consider buying the club.

It comes as Musk seeks to abandon a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter just four months after announcing on the platform that he would buy the social media company, which landed him in court.

Musk has a history of being offbeat and irreverent tweeting, sometimes making it hard to tell when he's joking.

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"Next thing I'm going to buy is Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in," he tweeted on April 27, two days after Twitter's board accepted his unsolicited offer to buy the company.

Musk's tweets about possible acquisitions have landed him in trouble with US regulators in the past.

In 2018, he tweeted that "funds were secured" for a $72bn deal to take Tesla private, but did not follow through with an offer.

Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million in civil penalties, with Musk resigning as chairman of Tesla, to resolve claims by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that he had defrauded investors.

The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Musk's tweet that he would buy Manchester United outside of normal business hours.

• ANALYSIS |

  Elon Musk's antics could finally take its toll on him

Musk's ambitions range from colonizing Mars to creating a new, sustainable energy economy, and in the process, he's created electric vehicle maker Tesla, rocket company SpaceX, and a host of smaller companies, including rocket maker of tunnels, Boring Company.

Manchester United is one of the most famous names in world football but is currently in a sporting crisis amid angry calls from fans for the club's current owners, the American Glazer family, to step down.

The northern England-based team has more than 32 million followers on its main Twitter account and Musk's first tweet about the club garnered almost 400,000 likes on the platform in four hours.

Elon Musk Manchester United