World billionaire and Tesla CEO on Wednesday said that he was joking when he tweeted hours previously that he was going to buy currently struggling English football club Manchester United Plc (MANU.N).
"No, this is a long-running joke on Twitter. I'm not buying any sports teams," Musk posted when a user asked if he was serious about buying the club. "Although, if it were any team, it would be Man U," he added, "they were my fav (sic) team as a kid," Musk tweeted.
Elon Musk had earlier tweeted: "I'm buying Manchester United ur (sic) welcome.” Some Manchester United fans, who are not impressed by their club's poor performance of late, had previously urged Musk on Twitter to consider buying the club.
His tweet on buying Man U comes even as Musk seeks to back out of a $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter (TWTR.N) only four months after announcing on the platform he would buy the social media company, which is now a subject of litigation.
The world’s richest man has a history of being controversial and posting irreverent tweets, making it difficult sometimes to when he is joking not.
Musk has once posted that he intends to buy Coca-Cola with the aim of putting back cocaine in it.
"Next I'm buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in," he tweeted on April 27, two days later Twitter's board accepted his unsolicited offer to buy the company.
On Wednesday he also tweeted: "And I'm not buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in, despite the extreme popularity of such a move."