A group that includes activist investor Jana Partners and NFL player Travis Kelce says it has accumulated one of the largest ownership stakes in Six Flags Entertainment and intends to press the company’s leadership on ways to improve the struggling amusement park operator’s business.

Jana said Tuesday that the investor group now owns an economic interest of approximately 9% in Six Flags. The group plans to ‘engage’ with Six Flags’ management and board of directors to discuss ways to enhance shareholder value and improve visitors’ experience.

Shares in the Charlotte, North Carolina-based Six Flags surged 17.7% on the news. The shares added another 5.1% gain in after-hours trading. Even with Tuesday’s rally, the company’s shares are down about 47% so far this year.

Six Flags reported a loss of $319.4 million for the first half of the year. The company said attendance fell 9% in the three months that ended June 29, due partly to bad weather and a ‘challenged consumer’ in most of the markets it operates in.

The investor group also includes consumer executive Glenn Murphy and technology executive Dave Habiger.

Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, said in a statement that he grew up going to Six Flags amusement parks.

‘The chance to help make Six Flags special for the next generation is one I couldn’t pass up,’ he said.

Card-reading contact lenses, X-ray poker tables, trays of poker chips that read cards, hacked shuffling machines that predict hands. The technology alleged to have been used to execute a multistate, rigged poker operation sounds like it’s straight out of Hollywood.

And those were only some of the gadgets that authorities say were used to swindle millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims through rigged, high-dollar, underground poker games over more than five years.

A sprawling indictment unsealed Thursday by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York charged Chauncey Billups, the head coach of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, and Damon Jones, a former NBA player, along with members of the Mafia and dozens of other defendants, with being part of a conspiracy.

The victims were “at the mercy of concealed technology, including rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contacts lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella of Brooklyn said in a statement.

Cheating at poker is as old as poker itself. But today, wearable tech and nano-cameras are putting even upstanding poker players on their guard.

The defendants used “special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards,” Nocella said at a news conference announcing the indictments.

He also showed a photo of an X-ray table that “could read cards face down on the table … because of the X-ray technology.”

“Defendants used other cheating technologies, such as poker chip tray analyzers, which is a poker chip tray that secretly reads cards using a hidden camera,” he said.

And while marking poker cards so they are visible only with special eyewear is an old trick, new radio-frequency identification and infrared technologies have ramped up the sophistication levels.

Technically speaking, many of the devices involved in the alleged scam authorities detailed Thursday are relatively cheap to manufacture, said Sal Piacente, a gaming security consultant.

By the time they reach their customers, however, the cost of industrial shufflers or tables can easily approach $100,000, once distributors and middlemen are factored in.

“You could make a lucrative career buying this stuff,” Piacente said.

Casino and gaming security consultants told NBC News that the alleged scheme was possible only because the games were underground. In backrooms, there was none of the surveillance tech that reputable casinos use to catch players cheating.

“A lot of the features which made this scheme so successful would have been ID’d a lot sooner, or very quickly, in a traditional regulated gaming environment,” said Ian Messenger, a former U.K. law enforcement officer and founder and CEO of the Association of Certified Gaming Compliance Specialists.

More than any other tech, it was the reprogramming of the industrial card shufflers — identified in charging documents as Deckmate-brand machines — that authorities said was key to the alleged game rigging.

Deckmates are not sold directly to the public — though many used ones can be found for sale online. The ones at the high-dollar games cited in the indictment could read cards and predict which player had the best hand. Neither Deckmate nor its parent company, Light & Wonder, were implicated in any way in Thursday’s indictments.

A spokesman for Light & Wonder told NBC News in a statement that the company was aware of reports about the charges against people but said they were not affiliated with the company.

“We sell and lease our automatic card shufflers and other gaming products and services only to licensed casinos and other licensed gaming establishments,” said Andy Fouché, the company’s vice president of communications. “We will cooperate in any law enforcement investigation related to this indictment.”

Reprogramming shufflers is not a new trick. In 2023, hackers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas presented research showing how to hack a Deckmate shuffler and use it to cheat.

The rigged shuffler machines would transmit information about the players’ hands to an off-site “operator,” according to prosecutors.

The operator would then communicate the information to someone else at the table, dubbed the “quarterback.” The victim was known as the “fish.”

Here, the high-tech gadgets met the low-tech of a card game.

The quarterback might touch the $1,000 poker chip or tap his chin or touch his black chips to indicate who at the table had the best hand.

Text messages obtained by prosecutors also appear to show defendants concerned that a fish would leave the table if he lost too many hands.

“Guys please let him win a hand he’s in for 40k in 40 minutes he will leave if he gets no traction,” read one text message released by authorities.

But according to Messenger, the consultant, it was not the tech that made the alleged scheme so successful for so long. What set it apart was the level of communication.

For example, he said, the card information had to be seamlessly passed from the dealing machines to an off-site operator and back to a person back at the table, all without alerting the fish.

“The piece that made this so successful was the coordination, not the technology,” he said.

Target said Thursday that it is eliminating about 1,800 corporate positions in an effort to streamline decision-making and accelerate initiatives to rebuild the flagging discount retailer’s customer base.

About 1,000 employees are expected to receive layoff notices next week, and the company also plans to eliminate about 800 vacant jobs, a company spokesperson said. The cuts represent about 8% of Target’s corporate workforce globally, although the majority of the affected employees work at the company’s Minneapolis headquarters, the spokesperson said.

Chief Operating Officer Michael Fiddelke, who is set to become Target’s next CEO on Feb. 1, issued a note to personnel on Thursday announcing the downsizing. He said further details would come on Tuesday, and he asked employees at the Minneapolis offices to work from home next week.

“The truth is, the complexity we’ve created over time has been holding us back,” Fiddelke, a 20-year Target veteran, wrote in his note. “Too many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions, making it harder to bring ideas to life.”

Target, which has about 1,980 U.S. stores, lost ground to Walmart and Amazon in recent years as inflation caused shoppers to curtail their discretionary spending. Customers have complained of messy stores with merchandise that did not reflect the expensive-looking but budget-priced niche that long ago earned the retailer the jokingly posh nickname “Tarzhay.”

Fiddelke said in August when he was announced as Target’s next CEO that he would step into the role with three urgent priorities: reclaiming the company’s position as a leader in selecting and displaying merchandise; improving the customer experience by making sure shelves are consistently stocked and stores are clean; and investing in technology.

He cited the same goals in his message to employees, calling the layoffs a “necessary step in building the future of Target and enabling the progress and growth we all want to see.”

“Adjusting our structure is one part of the work ahead of us. It will also require new behaviors and sharper priorities that strengthen our retail leadership in style and design and enable faster execution,” he wrote.

Target has reported flat or declining comparable sales — those from established physical stores and online channels — in nine out of the past 11 quarters. The company reported in August that comparable sales dipped 1.9% in its second quarter, when its net income also dropped 21%.

The job cuts will not affect any store employees or workers in Target’s sorting, distribution and other supply chain facilities, the company spokesperson said.

The corporate workers losing their jobs will receive pay and benefits until Jan. 8 as well as severance packages, the spokesperson said.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are hitting toy giants Mattel and Hasbro as the critical holiday season nears. Still, both companies see a successful year end ahead.

“This quarter, our U.S. business was again challenged by industry-wide shifts in retailer ordering patterns,” CEO Ynon Kreiz said on Mattel’s recent earnings call. “That said, consumer demand for our products grew in every region, including in the U.S.”

During the most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Mattel said sales slipped 6% globally, led by a 12% decline in North America. International sales rose 3%.

Some of the company’s top performing categories included Hot Wheels and action figures, primarily from the “Jurassic World,” Minecraft and WWE franchises.

Other Mattel brands saw a drop in sales, however, including Barbie and Fisher-Price.

With retail stores waiting until the last minute to assess the level of tariffs that would apply to their holiday orders, Kreiz said “since the beginning of the fourth quarter, orders from retailers in the U.S. have accelerated significantly.”

Retailers “expect strong demand for the holiday and they are restocking,” he added.

Meanwhile, rival toy giant Hasbro’s revenue jumped 8% in the quarter and it raised its financial guidance for the rest of the year.

Key drivers of that included “Peppa Pig” and Marvel franchise toys, as well as the Wizards of the Coast games.

Hasbro “managed tariff volatility with agility” and used price hikes to protect its margins, said Gina Goetter, the company’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer.

The company remains “firmly on track” to achieve its financial targets.

“As we calculate the various scenarios of where that absolute rates will play out, we’re really putting all of our levers to work,” she said on the company’s recent earnings call.

“From how we think about pricing, how we’re thinking about our product mix, how we’re thinking about our supply chain, and how we’re managing all of our operating expenses to mitigate and offset the impact” of tariffs, she said.

For its part, Hasbro also saw “softness” in the U.S. during the quarter due to retail chains waiting longer to place holiday orders, but said momentum is accelerating as the season gets underway.

In July, Mattel’s chief financial officer, Paul Ruh, said that the company was raising prices because of tariffs.

“We have implemented a variety of actions that will help us withstand some of those headwinds and those include … supply chain efficiencies and some pricing adjustments, particularly in the U.S.,” Ruh said on the company’s earnings conference call.

“So with that array of actions, we’re able to withstand some of the uncertainty that is mostly coming in the top line,” Ruh said. “Our goal is to keep prices as low as possible for our consumers.”

Still, Kreiz said that “consumers are buying our products and the toy industry is growing.”

He also said that consumers are taking price hikes in stride and those increases haven’t hurt demand: “We are not seeing any slowdown in consumer demand so far.”

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said the company has also raised some prices, but it was “pretty surgical” in what it chose to adjust.

“In terms of ongoing pricing, I think we just kind of have to see how the holiday goes and the consumer holds up,” he told analysts on the company’s earnings call.

Cocks also cautioned that there may be a two-tier economy forming, something other executives and economists have observed in recent months.

“Right now, I think it’s really kind of a tale of two consumers. The top 20%, particularly in the U.S., continue to spend pretty robustly,” he said. “The balance of households are watching their wallets a bit more.”

On Friday, the Labor Department released the latest consumer price index data, which showed that inflation is rising at a 3% annual pace, up from August’s 2.9%.

In May, Kreiz told CNBC that approximately half of the company’s toys were sourced from China.

Beijing has faced some of the steepest tariffs from Washington of any U.S. trade partner, as Trump has rolled out his disruptive trade agenda this year.

Mattel’s Ruh said the company continued to adjust its supply chains in response to shifting global tariff policies.

“We will be continuing to work with our retailers to make sure that the product is on the shelf,” he said.

At the same time, Hasbro’s Goetter said the company is diversifying its supply chains away from high-tariff countries.

“By 2026, we expect approximately 30% of our total Hasbro toy and game revenue will be sourced from China and 30% of our revenue will be based in the U.S., as we opportunistically lean into our U.S. manufacturing capacity,” she said.