Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the platform has recorded a loss of around 29 billion US dollars. The online marketing agency Liberty has therefore investigated what Musk could have bought alternatively for this sum.
Only recently Elon Musk made headlines again because he renamed Twitter X. This seems to be just another in a series of unfortunate decisions that are increasingly weakening the company.
Since the multi-billionaire bought the microblogging service, Twitter has suffered a loss of 29 billion US dollars, as reported by CBS News, among others. To show more clearly how large this sum actually is, the online marketing agency Liberty examined which assets Elon Musk could have bought instead.
29 billion loss with Twitter: The “worst investment ever”?
To give an overview of what Elon Musk could have bought with 29 billion US dollars, Liberty analysed sports clubs, luxury goods such as art or jewellery and travel goods such as airlines, buildings and hotels.
The agency itself writes: “Liberty analyses EVERYTHING that Musk could have bought with his losses”. In addition, Musk’s Twitter acquisition is, in their opinion, the “worst investment ever”.
Sports teams, buildings and art: Musk could have bought all this
The analysis revealed that he could have bought, for example, the ten best football teams in the world with the sum. These include Real Madrid, Manchester United, Liverpool, Barcelona and Manchester City. Together, these five clubs are worth $27.4 billion, according to Forbes.
In addition, Musk could have bought companies such as Panasonic for 28.91 billion US dollars 0r H&M for 27.31 billion US dollars. eBay would have been worth only 26.71 billion US dollars.
In the luxury goods sector, Musk could have bought the ten most expensive works of art in the world for 2.34 billion US dollars. The price for the most expensive pieces of jewellery ever sold would in turn be a measly 339.2 million US dollars. For each of the ten most valuable superyachts in the world, Musk would have had to spend 10.19 billion US dollars.
Loss with Twitter: Musk could have been Zuckerberg’s direct competitor
If Elon Musk had instead invested 29 billion US dollars in Facebook parent company Meta, he would have become the fifth largest shareholder with a 4.4 percent stake. This would have allowed him to compete with Zuckerberg – which seems to be a concern for him anyway. If he were to invest 44 billion US dollars instead, he would even own 6.7 percent of the shares and would thus be the third-largest shareholder. The amount corresponds to the purchase price of Twitter.
If the Tesla CEO would rather look into the hotel industry, he could have invested the 29 billion US dollars in the seven most valuable hotels in the world. According to Liberty, this would have cost him a total of only 25 billion US dollars. By the way, the most expensive buildings in the world are in Las Vegas. Musk could have bought eleven of them there for 28.11 billion US dollars.
