Tesla billionaire Elon Musk jokes about buying Man United

Elon Musk caused a stir on Wednesday by tweeting that he was buying Manchester United before saying several hours later that it was a joke.

It comes as the billionaire Tesla CEO faces a legal battle in the U.S. after backing out of a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. He is a prolific user of the platform, often musing about social issues or joking with his 103 million followers and occasionally getting into trouble with U.S. regulators.

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Early Wednesday, Musk sent a tweet about his political affiliations and then added in a second tweet: «Also, I'm buying Manchester United ur welcome.»

United's American owners, the Glazer family, have been strongly criticised by the club's fans for the team's underachievement in recent years.

Asked by a follower whether he was serious, Musk later tweeted: «No, this is a long-running joke on Twitter. I'm not buying any sports teams.»

Musk previously ran afoul of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for tweets claiming that he had the funding to take Tesla private in 2018, leading the electric vehicle maker's stock price to jump.

That led to a securities fraud settlement requiring that his tweets be approved by a Tesla attorney before being published.

He is now facing more legal woes over the deal to buy Twitter, which he negotiated in April.

Musk sold roughly $8.5bn worth of Tesla shares to help fund the purchase and lined up a diverse group of other investors to back him.

The deal fell apart last month after Musk said Twitter refused to provide him with enough information about the number of fake accounts on the platform.

Twitter could