Banana Ball Takes Its Show Nationwide

In a new essay for Bloomberg Businessweek, Ben Austin explains how the Savannah bananas are now the most important baseball team using their goofiness and over the top camp play to become the hottest ticket in American sports. Joining us now is the owner of the Banana Ball Championship League or the top banana, if you will, Jesse Cole. Jesse, for those of you who have been living under a rock and have never seen Banana Ball, can you explain to us what this is and why you wanted to change baseball into this amazing spectacle. Well, I I played baseball my whole life, and, you know, I realized that there were some parts of the game that may be too long, too slow, too boring, and we wanted to change it. And the name of our company is Fans First Entertainment. So, you know, we thought what would fans want? And so why can't fans catch a foul ball and have it be an out during a game? Why not? You know? Why can't we have big celebrations and dancing players and dancing umpires? You know? Why can't we just make the game faster and more exciting? And so we built this one step at a time. You know, we started... My wife and I, we only sold two tickets when we started. We were sleeping on an airbed. And now to see that there's 5,000,000 people on a waitlist, we've been selling out a 100,000 seat stadiums, and it's just amazing. Now our biggest game, our Super Bowl is here with all six teams, and it's been an amazing journey over the last eleven years. Jesse, it's David. You can find me on that wait list. Have yet to Me too. Me too. Despite my kids' eagerness to do so. Talk about a a little more about that, the the way that this has caught on, how surprised you might have been by the degree to which this has been embraced by so many people. I mean, you're selling out stadiums all over place. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, right now more than ever, the world is hungry for fun, hungry for joy. And, you know, we don't take ourselves too seriously. And the ball in the field is unbelievable. These players are unbelievably talented. I mean, they're doing backflip catches, and they're doing catches between the legs, and they're hitting 400 foot home runs. But, also, they understand it's about entertainment and putting on a show. So they'll come and do a walk up dance. They'll do a celebration that's fun. And I think, you know, the world needs that. And, you know, it's a balance. You know? There's baseball, which is a great game. We're so grateful to have some great ball players, but we know that we gotta entertain in the crowd. And with 40,000 fans here tonight, you know, we're gonna have all of our players up in the upper deck entertaining the crowd. And it's just about breaking down that barrier between fans and players and giving fans something they've never seen before, never felt before at a stadium. And that's what brings us joy every single night. Jesse, I gotta tell you. What I love about it is the price point because you make it affordable for families. I mean, I gotta admit, I go to a Yankee game. I'm hurting that for words. Need to take out a loan. So how do you keep it at that price for families? What is it? $35 a ticket? Oh, it's fine. Yeah. And no ticket fees, no convenient fees, no service fees. We pay your taxes. I mean, everything. Someone should. I mean, that's that's that's our model. And when you make every decision by the fans, that's why we do it. And so, yeah, I mean, we're fortunate. Even tickets are going in the secondary market for hundreds of dollars. So we built our own secondary market, and we kept every ticket at face value where we're investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in that because you can't just say you're gonna be fans first. You have to do it with every single thing that you do, and we've been trying to do that since day one. And, the fans certainly have have repaid us and shown up more than we could ever imagine. Jesse, how do you find these players? That was gonna be my question. I'm very curious about this. They have to be able to dance and do flips, and I'm gonna guess that an Aaron Judge might not be skilled at that. So you... Are you looking at baseball players primarily? Are you looking at folks with a dancing background? Who who do you target for this? Well, I'll tell you, at first, not many people wanna play for us. They're like, what is the craziest thing out of... I think we had, like, 50 total people show up for the tryouts. Now we have thousands. And we have from former Major League All Stars and World Series champions like Jackie Bradley playing full time. We got first round or second round. You have to play baseball at a very high level. I mean, throw 90, 95 miles an hour, hit 400 foot home runs, but you have to be able to, you know, understand what it's about, and that's entertainment. So our guys work... We... We've been doing rehearsals the last three days for hours, early in the morning, late at night. We've got brand new performances, seven original songs, a huge final inning show. So you have to understand that you gotta do things, get out of your comfort zone. And, yes, they... Every day, they're practicing trick plays, catching the ball between the legs and backflips. So they have taken their baseball ability to another level and push themselves to another level. And I think those are the players we look for every single night. I mean, I think it's really fun because for a while, high school sports got so serious that you really had to pick one thing to do. Right? You had to dedicate, it seemed like, fully. And I feel like this is a place for the kid who was also a drama nerd or also might have, like, moonlit. And I have seen some of your players do some very excellent turns. I will tell you. You know, these guys who have these other skills. And I was I was listening to an interview about one of your players who maybe wouldn't have made the cut with his baseball skills, but he used to walk on stilts years ago. And they were like, oh, bring the stilts. You can pitch on stilts, and that was the clincher. I mean, how do you make the calculation of, oh, yeah. We got a stilts guy. We don't need another one of those, but we need the good lip sync guy and the guy who could do the pirouettes and then also do do fastball. Well, 100. I mean, we have a Broadway singer. I mean, Derek Klein, one of the best Broadway singers, a lister doing amazing shows, and now he also played college baseball at UCLA. So now he joins us, but you better believe he's gonna be singing when he comes to the mound in in stilts. I mean, yes. He he show up at a tryout in stilts, and, he said, do you want me to walk in it? I go, no. I want you to hit in it. I go, can you hit in stilts? He said, sure. And he went out and started hitting my drives and stilts, and now he's become a legend. And so I think that's what it's all about. What can people do that people have never seen before on a baseball field? We got a guy in a unicycle. That's unbelievable. Literally, a unicycle, driving line drives. I'm like, I don't know how you can do that. And that's what makes me exciting. And so fans show up, and they're just like, what's gonna happen tonight? And that's what makes it special for all of us. Well, that's what it get. It's always like a guessing game as to what's gonna happen. So I have to ask you. So this Banana Bowl, is is it more like the World Series, or is it more like the Super Bowl halftime show? Like, how would you kind of put it as far as entertainment's concerned? This is Super Bowl, WrestleMania. I mean, we're doing a show with, with original performances. We got tons of guest stars. We are going over the top. It's every single half inning. There will be something. And so it's it's commercial free. It's ad free. We are giving it all. I am literally... I mean, it's 10 new performances. I mean, it is over the top. So it is entertainment. That's what we are. That's the business we're in, but they're also competing for a championship. And right before they win the championship, there's gonna be an 11 in... Eleven minute performance on the field. It's like, oh, no. Forget about the championship now. We're gonna do eleven minute show for everyone, and that's what it's all about. We wanna give fans something that, you know, is really remarkable and unforgettable. Jesse, you're dawned the yellow tuxedo. You were the face of this league, but there's also a component of this, which is you growing it, dealing with the media rights side of things here. This is gonna be on Disney plus, I I gather. Games are streamed on on YouTube. Talk a bit about how you've navigated that world. Again, you've you've seen this kind of amazing growth. How have you navigated the role of kind of figuring out the media landscape and and where you fit into that? Well, every decision is at fans first. So very easily, you know, we could have multi... Huge multimillion dollar deals if we went exclusive, but we said no. We're gonna keep every game free for our fans on YouTube. And that is something that we will always stay true to because we want fans to be able to experience So we leave millions of dollars on the table to do that. So, yes, our fans support us. And between tickets and merchandise, we are supported more than we could ever imagine. But for media, yeah, partners, Disney, great. Awesome. We're gonna get it to millions of people, but also it's gonna be free on YouTube. And I think that's that balance we're always gonna stay true to. Can I ask a really, an artful question? How much do your players make? Is it enough to do it full time? Do they have side hustles? What is the deal? Oh, yes. I mean, we spend millions of dollars on investing on our players and cast. We have a 150 cast members, 150 plus players. Mean, I average player salary is, you know, well into 6 figures. I mean, they are they are doing well, and they play a 100 less games than major leagues. So they only play 60 games, but we're also paying them at a great level. And we're gonna keep growing that as they continue to make an impact with our fans. Now, Jesse, you're also playing at the same time that the major leaguers are. I mean, are you going to consider to keep doing that? Do you wanna go maybe to a different season so you don't have to compete with that, or or maybe that's not even your competition? There's an abundance mindset. There's a scarcity mindset. We have an abundance mindset. So the more that we can do, I think there's plenty of opportunities. And we're playing NFL stadiums now. We're playing college football stadiums with a 100,000 fans. We're gonna we're gonna play international. There's all these opportunities that we can continue to bring our show to, like major league stadiums like Nats Park or Yankee Stadium. But, also, you know, again, we can, do things that... We you can break the rules a little bit and play places people never imagined, and I think that's what's fun about it. Dig into that a little bit more. You've got the the bananas. You've got the Texas tailgaters. You've got the local beach coconuts. His... What does expansion look like? How how do you see this kind of growing city by city here in The US? Yeah. I mean, we have six teams, and it's really about... We grow just around the country. We play from small stadiums to 100,000 seat stadiums. So we have six teams. They're all based out of Savannah. We may have some more two teams in the future, but they they... Know, the reality is it's how do we take care of more fans? Our business grows by serving fans. We serve 3,400,000 fans this year. We're probably gonna go over four, four and a half million next year. We're gonna look international. All these things we're gonna continue to explore. The aim of the game is creating fans, and I believe we're gonna create 1,000,000,000 fans. And the only way we do it is one fan at a time. And so we got a long way to go, and we're not saying, hey. Add more teams. Add more teams. It's only on how we can bring a unique show and a better experience to the fans, and that's how we're gonna grow. Jesse set the stage for us. Gates open tonight. What what happens? Walk us through the the evening. What we can expect as all of this. Don't don't give away too many secrets, but just sort of how will this all unfold. Let's just say I I walked here at 7AM, there's fans already waiting outside. It's unbelievable. We have fans from all 50 states, multiple countries. I mean, like I said, this is the biggest event in Banana Boat history. So at 02:00, there'll be a a thousands of fans waiting outside. We'll do a big rope drop. They're gonna come in. They'll be meet by all of our players, our cast. There'll be autographs. We got all six teams doing autographs. Then we have a plaza show out in front. We have about five, 10,000 fans that goes from three to 04:30. Then we do a march with our championship teams. We do a big huge opening, open up the gates. Then we do 70 things before the game starts. We're gonna have skydiving coming in. We're gonna have huge performances. We're gonna have a bunch of surprises like any these. You had for breakfast, but could you ship us some, please? This is a very early show, and we could use some of this energy coming our way. We love it. Our team says that the joke they say... People ask if you had a sip of coffee. You ever drink coffee, Jesse? And I said, no. I've never had a sip of coffee in my What? They say coffee wakes up and has a cup of Jesse. That's I like it. I like it. That's so Yeah. So it's it's all night long. We're gonna go full show final inning performance, and then we have an hour and half postgame plaza party where we're gonna bring 5,000 fans on the field. I mean, we put eight to ten hours of a show. We wanna always give people more than what they expected, and we're doing that times a 100 tonight.