Fans of one professional sports team are urging entrepreneur Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, to drop his quest to buy Twitter for a staggering $43 billion and to instead buy their team.
“Manchester United fans are pleading with Tesla owner Elon Musk to buy the club from the Glazer family,” the Manchester Evening News reported. “The drive to bring the richest man on the planet started with talkSPORT host and United fan Andy Goldstein responding to a tweet from Musk about his efforts to buy Twitter.”
Goldstein reportedly responded to a tweet from Musk about his offer to buy Twitter, writing: “Elon, Elon. Retract your offer. Buy Man United.”
“Spend £2bn on the best players in the world,” Goldstein added. “Win everything and then boast about it on Twitter.”
The Daily Mail noted that the news comes as dozens of Manchester United fans have “descended on the club’s Carrington training ground to protest against the Glazer family’s ownership, amid yet another season of failure on the pitch.”
“Banners reading ‘Glazers out’ and ‘Disgrace – Not fit to wear the shirt’ were held up outside the gates to the complex, with United beefing up security in anticipation and calling in police,” the report added. “The demonstration on Friday lunchtime appears to be a precursor to a larger anti-Glazer protest planned for Old Trafford ahead of the Premier League match with Norwich City on Saturday.”
Various reports, mostly in British publications, highlighted numerous tweets that fans have sent to Musk asking him to buy the team.
Twitter has attempted to stop Musk from taking over the company by adopting a so-called “poison pill” that effectively allows all shareholders, except those trying to buy out the company, to purchase newly offered shares at a discounted price.
Musk would have to purchase the new shares at a higher price, which could end up being too much for him to afford, if he wanted to takeover the company. Despite throwing a massive roadblock in Musk’s way, the adoption of the poison pill would not bar Musk from being able to buy the company, it would only make it harder.
“A poison pill is a way to stave off someone until you can get a higher price. It makes it outrageously expensive for the person to buy it,” said Charles Elson, the founding director of the University of Delaware’s Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. “It’s a doomsday machine, it’s the atomic bomb, everyone gets wiped out — that’s the key.”
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