When Savannah Bananas founder Jesse Cole refers to the team’s events, he calls them “shows” as opposed to “games.”
This summer, the show will be on the road for games in huge stadiums, and 10 of them will air live on ESPN and Disney’s linear TV and streaming platforms. Two will be on ESPN, eight will be on ESPN2, and all ten will stream on ESPN+ and Disney+, the network announced Monday.
ESPN has worked with the Bananas for several years, starting with the Bananaland docuseries and continuing with a smattering of games in the last couple of years. This summer will feature the most expansive package yet, as the Bananas embark on a tour that will include a sold-out extravaganza at Clemson’s football stadium with over 80,000 fans on Apr. 26 and two nights at the Panthers’ stadium in Charlotte with over 150,000 fans combined.
It’s a serendipitous partnership for Cole, who cites Walt Disney as an inspiration for his decision to take a considerable financial risk in launching the team in 2016 and the innovations the franchise has deployed to become a social media dynamo and woo hordes of young families to the events.
“Where Walt Disney sat at a bench in Griffith Park with his two daughters on the carousel and said, ‘I wish there was a place where adults and kids could have fun together,’ I had a similar mindset when I was sitting and coaching in the Cape Cod League,” Cole told Front Office Sports. “I remembered how much fun it was playing, but it wasn’t as fun watching. I thought, ‘Well, what if people that love baseball can come out and have fun just for the entertainment?’ I put myself in fans’ shoes: Even if I didn’t love baseball, could I love coming to the ballpark to experience a show?”
“We expect to have success both on live games, but also in a broader sense whether that’s via social, or Disney and ESPN synergy opportunities, and audience expansion with younger and female viewers,” ESPN VP of programming and content strategy Brent Colborne told FOS. “It’s truly innovative what they’re doing. We look at ESPN and Disney as innovative companies, and we want to be alongside for the ride on that.”
The top Bananas game that ESPN aired last year drew 460,000 viewers, and other games, as Colborne alluded to, have drawn a higher percentage of young and women fans than typical events on the network.
A Different Game
Cole calls it “boring” when batters step out of the box, or draw walks, or there are mound visits. He banned all of that. “What if we created rules where everything was faster and more exciting?” Cole remembered. “We look at every moment in a game: Can it be exciting and be something nobody has ever seen before?”
Other “Banana Ball” rules include a two-hour time limit on games, no bunting, and the ability for batters to steal first base. There’s also a good deal of gymnastics and choreography inherent in the games, while still maintaining a fairly high level of baseball competition.
The Bananas have already sold over two million tickets for this summer—and there’s a waitlist of over three million more, Cole noted.
Cole could not have conceived having this much success.
“You could never imagine this,” Cole admitted. “When we first came to Savannah, we sold a handful of tickets. My wife and I had to sell our house, empty out our savings account—we were sleeping on an air bed. We overdrafted our account. We were out of money a few months into our time in Savannah.”
Since the first season, the Bananas have sold out every game.
One of the things we learned during the pandemic, as there were games in empty arenas and stadiums, is that crowds are an underrated component of how meaningful sports feel on the other side of the screen.
“To have sold-out crowds on TV or on our streaming platforms just shows general interest, and when the crowd is completely crazy in the seventh inning and they truly care because it’s like a rock concert and baseball game at the same time—you’re gonna want to watch,” Colborne, the ESPN VP said.
The team’s parent company is called Fans First, and one of the ways Cole seeks to exemplify this is with the ticket pricing: There are no fees, and tax is included.
Remarking on how the Bananas have thrived on social media, Cole again alluded to Walt Disney, who adapted from being film-centric to the advent of TV with a series showcasing Disneyland in 1954.
The Bananas first went viral on Facebook during their inaugural season with a “Can’t Stop the Peeling” music video. They’re active on every social platform, but especially TikTok, where they have 9.5 million followers. Their recurring opponents, the Party Animals, even have 2.6 million followers on the platform.
“As soon as we saw TikTok start, we knew it was perfect for us,” Cole said. “The music, the dancing, the skits, the promos—all of that.”
Another way the Bananas keep things fresh is by making sure every night is a new experience.
“We do rehearsals all week long. People don’t realize—every single show is completely different,” Cole said. “We do 10-15 things every night that we’ve never done before in a live crowd. So in a given season, we’re doing 1,500 brand new things that are remarkable or marketable or unique or memorable.”
