The Savannah Bananas storm Fenway Park
The Savannah Bananas storm Fenway Park
The colorful club is drawing sellout crowds to MLB parks and changing baseball for the better.
BY Paul Mueller
Savannah Bananas founder and owner Jesse Cole dreamed as a kid about playing for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. This weekend, he will live that dream … sort of. Rather than taking the field in a Red Sox uniform, Cole will strut out in his trademark yellow tuxedo and bowler. In his hand, not a baseball bat, but a microphone.
And rather than play for one of baseball’s most iconic franchises, he will introduce arguably the greatest baseball city in America to the “Greatest Show in Sports,” as the Bananas will play at a sold-out Fenway Park Saturday night as part of their 2024 world tour.
If you’re not up on Banana Ball, it’s Cole’s fan-first, entertainment-driven production that’s less America’s pastime and more Globetrotters on grass. It’s a legitimate circus, complete with dancing, acrobatics, lighting things on fire, and even players in kilts—all with some pretty good baseball built in.
When I wrote about the Bananas last year, Cole spoke of his vision for the future. Selling out an MLB stadium was on the list. What Cole and his team have done since has elevated the Savannah Bananas from cultural phenomenon to full-on sports and entertainment juggernaut.
Bananas on Fire
Cole and his wife, Emily, founded the Bananas in 2016, but the team really caught fire in 2023 with its first Banana Ball World Tour.
The 87-game, 33-city tour that spanned 21 states expanded the team’s audience, as they went from playing in small, regional minor league stadiums to entertaining more than half a million fans in venues across the country with over seven million more watching from home. It also featured the creation of a sister club, the Party Animals, which tours alongside the Bananas as their primary competition. A year later, the Party Animals, not satisfied with being second banana, have emerged as an entity all their own, developing their own fanbase and amassing 3.4 million followers across major social media channels.
Last year was also a year of revenue growth. While the team didn’t share revenue figures, it has established partnerships with Zappos as its official title partner and exclusive footwear partner, EvoShield as its official equipment and uniform provider, and has executed multiple activations with Dunkin’. These partnerships have opened up revenue streams beyond ticket sales and merchandise—revenue Cole continues to pour back into the team.
Bigger Swings in 2024
The Savannah Bananas’ 2024 tour only stops in 26 cities, but unlike the 2023 tour that featured only stops in minor-league stadiums and smaller venues, this year’s tour includes six major league ballparks, including Fenway this weekend.
The Bananas’ first game in an MLB stadium was in March, when they played in front of 41,000 fans at a sold-out Minute Maid Park in Houston. After Fenway, the Bananas are scheduled to play at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. in July, followed by Cleveland’s Progressive Field in August. Those games are already sold out. Then, after a stop in Philadelphia in September, the 2024 tour will culminate in October with a season finale at loanDepot Park in Miami, followed by the most Bananas after-party imaginable.
The club also has a new ocean cruise that it’s dubbed “Bananaland at Sea.”
Launching from Miami and in partnership with theme cruise charter company Sixthman and Norwegian Cruise Lines, the four-night cruise makes two stops in the Bahamas and features everything you’d expect from a cruise experience, with a Savannah Bananas flare. Team players will provide entertainment and fans will have opportunities to interact with them throughout the trip. It’s another big, outside-the-box idea from the Bananas brain trust, but it’s also yet another revenue driver, as prices range from $875 per person for a shared cabin to $15,600 for a three-bedroom suite, with tickets to the season finale in Miami included.
But while Cole and his team develop new revenue streams and work to grow the Bananas brand beyond baseball, they haven’t forgotten about their bread and butter.
Heating Up With the Firefighters
Growing the game of Banana Ball is about more than just visiting more cities, as the introduction of the Party Animals proves.
That’s why, just last week, the Bananas debuted a third team, the Firefighters. The team is led by their head coach Valerie Perez, a full-time firefighter who competed on the U.S. Women’s National Baseball team in 2023. And despite having just debuted, the Firefighters already have nearly 200,000 followers on social media, including 72,000 on Instagram and 80,000 on TikTok.
When I spoke to Cole and Bananas Marketing Director Kara Heater last year, they alluded to the idea of one day having a full Banana Ball league with teams across the country. According to Cole, he frequently receives inquiries from entrepreneurs about forming Banana Ball teams in their own cities.
With the introduction of the Firefighters and interest from both fans and potential partners, it appears that a full Banana Ball league could one day be in the cards.
Baseball Is Going Bananas
A little more than eight years after debuting in front of 4,000 fans at a sold-out Grayson Stadium in Savannah, the Bananas have sold out every game since. That includes this weekend’s game at Fenway. The team has already played in front of half a million fans in 2024, a number they expect to exceed one million by year’s end. Their ticket waitlist now sits at more than two million. Meanwhile, the Bananas’ social accounts have swelled to more than 13.6 million followers (not including its 1.42 million YouTube subscribers), including 8.5 million followers on TikTok alone.
But while the viability of the team and the product is now undeniable, the ripple effects on the game of baseball itself are starting to show.
Major League Baseball has taken cues from Banana Ball, which emphasizes pace of play and maximizing both on-field action and entertainment. While MLB can’t compete with the entertainment element, it has implemented rules in the last two years to increase game speed. It has also made on-field adjustments, such as making the bases bigger to encourage more stealing and eliminating the shift to allow for more offense, to promote more action. So far, the changes appear to be working.
And it’s not just MLB. Last week, the Tri-City Chili Peppers hosted the first-ever game of “Cosmic Baseball,” which is believed to be the first organized sporting event to be played entirely under black lights. The Chili Peppers are a collegiate summer league team in the Coastal Plain League, the league in which Banana Ball was born. And with three more cosmic baseball games scheduled for this summer, the Chili Peppers may have ushered in the next iteration of baseball entertainment.
So, slowly but surely, Cole and his team aren’t just building an empire, they’re changing baseball as we know it, and likely forever.
For Cole and the Bananas, the records, milestones, and general growth are coming faster than ever. This weekend, however, expect Cole to do something the yellow-tuxed marketing machine rarely has time to do—stop and enjoy the moment. “From selling only a handful of tickets in our first few months to now selling out one of the most iconic venues in sports is beyond special,” Cole wrote when he announced the Fenway sellout. “This is just the start and we are still in the first inning. But June 8 will be a day I will never forget.”
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