SANDUSKY, Ohio – Shaquille O’Neal has a Papa Johns pizza named after him. Maybe Travis Kelce will get his own roller coaster at Cedar Point?
It’s too early to tell what kind of role – if any – Kelce wants at Cedar Point and Six Flags, after the announcement this week that the NFL star and Cleveland Heights native is part of an activist investor group that now owns 9% of the amusement park company.
The announcement was accompanied by a sweet video featuring a very young Kelce with his family at Cedar Point and this statement from the two-time Super Bowl champ: “I am a lifelong Six Flags fan and grew up going to these parks with my family and friends. The chance to help make Six Flags special for the next generation is one I couldn’t pass up.”
Still, it’s unclear whether Kelce’s nostalgia for his childhood amusement park means that his involvement will be anything more than financial. (The Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com reached out to Kelce’s Cleveland-based agent for comment.)
The group that Kelce has joined is Jana Partners, a New York City-based firm that is described as an activist investor. That term is typically used to describe a firm that buys with the intent of making changes at a company, then selling.
“They’re typically not in this for the long haul,” said Michael Goldberg, executive director of the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship at Case Western Reserve University and a professor at the Weatherhead School of Management. The term “rabble rouser” is sometimes used to describe such investors, he said.
“Activists can be viewed very negatively,” Goldberg said. “It’s not altruism.”
Kelce, he said, could be used in part to put a “friendly, recognizable face” on some upcoming changes.
Industry consultant Dennis Speigel said he believes that Jana is aligned with another activist investor, Land & Buildings Investment Management, which last month called on Six Flags to separate the company’s real estate from its parks and sell the land to pay down debt and increase shareholder value.
The company would then lease back the land and operate the parks.
“Monetizing the company’s real estate provides a straightforward means of delivering substantial near-term shareholder gains” while preserving park operations and revenue, the company said in a public letter to Six Flags.
Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services in Cincinnati, said he is not a fan of the sell-and-lease solution.
“They still have to pay rent to the landowners,” Speigel said. “To me, it’s not the solution to their problem.”
Six Flags, which merged with Cedar Fair in 2024, has had a rough year, with steep declines in attendance and revenue through June. The company’s second-quarter report in August revealed an attendance drop of 9%, season pass sales down 8%, revenue down $100 million and $5 billion in debt.
Executives have talked repeatedly about selling property to pay down debt. Indeed, two parks already are slated to be closed and sold, including Six Flags America in Maryland and California’s Great America in California.
Meanwhile, the stock price is less than half of what it was at the time of the merger, although it has rallied somewhat in recent days in response to the Jana-Kelce announcement.
Also in August, Six Flags President and CEO Richard Zimmerman, who was CEO at Cedar Fair before the merger, announced his plans to depart at the end of 2025. And this month, Selim Bassoul, the former Six Flags CEO who helped orchestrate the merger, is stepping down from his role as executive chairman of the company.
The Six Flags board of directors also has seen numerous changes, with several long-time board members exiting in favor of new faces.
Matt Ouimet, who preceded Zimmerman as CEO at Cedar Fair, suggested on LinkedIn that more changes on the board may be necessary.
“The company is troubled and has big decisions to make,” he wrote. “I’m hoping that one of those decisions is acknowledging reality and giving the new CEO an opportunity to retire some board members and replace them with people who have proven track records with analogous businesses and demonstrated leadership qualities that will make them strong thought partners.”
Meanwhile, the shareholders are clearly getting restless.
Jana Partners did not respond to a request for comment. But according to a Wall Street Journal article, “Jana wants Six Flags to improve its marketing and the customer experience at its parks. It also sees opportunities to modernize technology, refresh leadership and evaluate a potential sale as ways to boost the company’s share price.”
Gary Rhodes, a spokesman for Six Flags, said the company looked forward to engaging with the new investors, but declined to say how or whether the company might like to use Kelce to promote its parks.
Kelce, who is engaged to pop superstar Taylor Swift, isn’t the first well-known athlete who Jana has enlisted to bring star power to its investment strategies.
In 2022, the company teamed up with former New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians pitcher CC Sabathia and NBA star Dwyane Wade on a campaign to help turn around Freshpet, a pet food company.
The involvement of Shaquille O’Neal in Papa Johns is a well-known case of a celebrity investor. After a racial controversy involving the pizza chain’s founder, O’Neal signed on in 2019 to help lead the company’s rebound.
He invested in several franchises, served on the Papa Johns board for several years, and remains a brand ambassador for the company. His Shaq-a-Roni pizza is still available at Papa Johns everywhere.
Related: What’s next for Six Flags? Cedar Point parent faces park sell-off, possible bankruptcy
Cedar Point’s parent company reports attendance rebound after early season slump
Six Flags leadership exodus continues with executive chairman’s departure
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