Six Flags Inc. railed against Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder earlier this week telling shareholders that while Snyder may have experience with beer and ballgames, he knows little about operating a theme park.
In a presentation to shareholders, Six Flags’ current management team and its investment banker, Lehman Brothers, said Snyder’s proposal to take over the company and turn it around are misguided.
“Running a football team with eight sold out home games every year is a lot different from operating a company with 29 theme parks open 180 days a year,” said one source with knowledge of the company. “These are fundamentally different businesses.”
Six Flags also said Snyder’s marketing proposals, such as re-branding the parks and selling advertising to corporate sponsors wouldn’t work.
“You can’t brand a theme park like you can a football stadium that’s on TV all the time,” said the source. “Can you imagine a Fed-Ex theme park?”
The presentation says Snyder’s Redskins and its football concessions are skewed toward beer sales and male-oriented brands like Hooter’s instead of Six Flags’ family audience.
Snyder, who didn’t return phone calls and his firm Red Zone LLC, are trying to gain approval from shareholders to replace Six Flags’ board and current management team.
Snyder wants to up his 11.7 percent stake in Six Flags to 34.9 percent but is only willing to pay $6.50 a share. The stock closed yesterday at $7.25 a share.
Six Flags, which is the largest theme-park operator behind Walt Disney Co., has a market capitalization of $674 million and debt load of $2.4 billion.