Elon Musk is among the many parties weighing up a formal bid for Manchester United as the deadline to make offers approaches.
The Red Devils were put up for sale by their owners, the Glazer family, last November and formal bids must be submitted by Friday for The Raine Group, the bank overseeing the transaction, to assess. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Britain's richest man and the chief executive of INEOS, announced in January that he is attempting to take control of the club he supports.
He faces reported competition from Qatari investors, the Middle Eastern country's Emir and individuals or consortiums based in Saudi Arabia and the United States. In an eye-catching update, Musk, another boyhood United fan, is also monitoring the situation with a matter of days until bids must be put on the table.
That is according to the Daily Mail, which claims the Tesla and Twitter owner is wondering if the opportunity at Old Trafford is too good to pass up. With an enormous net worth of £157billion - Forbes ranks Musk as the second-richest person in the world - he would have no trouble meeting the Glazers' asking price.
It is expected that a bid of up to £4.5bn could be enough to get a takeover over the line even though United's American owners reportedly wanted between £6bn and £8bn to sell up. The report notes that dozens of interested parties have already expressed their interest and signed the necessary paperwork to be granted access to confidential data about the club.
These include numerous tycoons based in Saudi Arabia - who are independent of those who own Newcastle - and Musk could potentially join forces with an interested individual or group to become the figurehead of the bid. The 51-year-old previously declared he was "buying Manchester United" before insisting he was joking.
Would you like to see Elon Musk take over at Old Trafford? Have your say in the comments!
"Also, I'm buying Manchester United ur welcome," Musk wrote on Twitter last August, as United endured a terrible start to the season, before playing down his comments and adding: "Although, if it were any team, it would be Man U. They were my fav team as a kid."
United's next owners will likely need to have money in reserve - up to £2bn, according to some estimates - to commit to redeveloping Old Trafford. This should be no issue for Musk, even though Tesla's plummeting stock price led to his net worth being slashed by £150bn since November.
Should United fetch a sum of £4.5bn as expected, they would become the most expensive sports team in the world, surpassing NFL side the Denver Broncos, who were bought for £3.7bn last year. So, while it remains to be seen whether Musk will formalise his interest with a bid ahead of Friday's deadline, his monitoring of the situation shows he has had a change of heart and is giving serious thought to taking over the Red Devils.
