The world of baseball is shifting, and it’s all thanks to the Savannah Bananas.
The Savannah, Georgia-based exhibition team, clad in bright yellow, is shaking up America’s favorite pastime. Players perform dance routines on the field. Outfielders occasionally turn flips when catching fly balls. The Bananas’ roster includes a pitcher on stilts.
“Think Harlem Globetrotters, only more so,” is the way Leslie Stahl, a host of “60 Minutes,” described Banana Ball in a recent segment.
Jesse and Emily Cole co-founded the team in 2016 to provide a “fans first” approach by focusing on the entertainment and lively atmosphere, rather than the outcome of the game itself.
The couple built the baseball team from the ground up. Now, after nearly a decade, the Bananas have become a multimillion-dollar franchise. The team rakes in more than $10 million annually from ticket sales, according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.
Aside from the monetary value, the Bananas have become social media celebrities, with the team’s TikTok account reaching over 10 million followers. Through choreographed dances and funny skits, the Bananas have become a viral sensation.
But how did it all happen?
How Jesse Cole built a multimillion-dollar franchise from the ground up
Cole grew up playing baseball in Scituate, Massachusetts. He attended Wofford College in 2002 as a pitcher and might have played professionally had an injury not sidetracked his career.
While at Wofford, Cole was part of the youth theater class and made a strong impression on his teacher, Kerry Ferguson: “He was so positive and curious and willing to take chances,” Ferguson told the Herald-Journal.
Cole played the part of a dog in an original play that Wofford students created. The musical was called “Go to Bed Amelia Red!” and played to sold-out audiences. Most of the students in the production had worked together. Cole (the only student-athlete in the group) initially felt a little out of place.
“It was some of the best fun I’ve had in my life,” Cole said to the Herald-Journal.
In his ghostwritten memoir “Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas,” Cole reflected on his Wofford theater experience.
“There’s an obvious parallel with what I’m doing now with the Bananas,” he said.
Having started as part of a summer collegiate league from 2016-2022, playing to mostly small crowds in modest stadiums, the Bananas have since become a hot commodity. They branched out and started playing every game under their Banana Ball rules in 2023. Now, they typically sell out MLB stadiums and have even sold out a few NFL stadiums.
In the “60 Minutes” segment, Stahl called the Savannah Bananas “a classic against-the-odds story.”
In 2016, just months before the Bananas’ first game, the team over-drafted its account, according to its site. The owners had to sell their home to keep the team going.
At first, it seemed no one would show up for games, mostly taking place at their home Grayson Stadium. That’s when their view shifted to selling out just one game to get people talking.
Their strategy? A fun, family-friendly baseball game with dances, skits in between innings and cheap food.
It worked.
“We went through 10,000 pieces of meat in an hour. It was brutal, but what we’ve learned is, you got to get through the messy to get to the great,” Cole told “60 Minutes.”
That hard work paid off tremendously. In 2023, Cole’s worth was estimated at $4 million, per the Herald-Journal, resulting from his team’s success.
‘It’s not about the followers or the amount of views’
The Bananas launched their TikTok account in 2020 to show how the team could make baseball fun with every video. In a LinkedIn post, Cole said he had one message to the team: “Post every single day so we can learn faster.”
Over the past five years, the Bananas’ TikTok account has amassed over 10 million followers and more than 263 million likes. The Party Animals, a team within the Bananas’ organization, grew its following to 2.9 million followers − more than any MLB team.
“But it’s not about the followers or the amount of views,” Cole wrote, “It’s about embracing our core ideology of being Fans First and Entertaining Always. We always believe our fans deserve new and fun entertainment every day.”
Although the team’s core values are rooted in exceptional fan experiences, how do the players and the team come up with the quirky and trendy videos and skits? It’s almost like “Saturday Night Live.”
The Savannah Bananas’ game preparation is similar to ‘Saturday Night Live’
There are four teams within the Bananas’ organization: the Savannah Bananas, Party Animals, Firefighters and the Texas Tailgaters. Each team has the set goal to entertain fans during the game, but also on social media.
To capture audiences, Cole said the teams have read-throughs, just like cast members do on the famous NBC late-night comedy sketch show “Saturday Night Live.”
In an interview posted to his TikTok page, Cole explained how his players come up with 1,500 ideas, and every week, they start over.
On Mondays, everyone travels in, and on Tuesdays, they have “OTT” or “Over The Top” idea sessions with the Bananas and Party Animals (or probably whichever team is playing the Bananas that week) and the entertainment team, where they brainstorm ideas.
“Then we have a table read, just like ‘Saturday Night Live.’ We put all these ideas, then we start doing rehearsals, then we start building out the dances, start bringing out the props, everything that goes into it,” he said in a TikTok video.
Once the ideas are set, the team holds live rehearsals at the stadium and in front of its “VIB” guests.
“Just like ‘Saturday Night Live’ at 8 p.m. on a Saturday, they do the full show in front of them, and Lorne Michaels and crew will cut some of the ones that don’t hit. We follow the same thing,” he said in the video.
Cole said the team does three shows a week and every show is different, keeping on with the tradition of unique and fun baseball.
Fans never know what they’re going to get.
The Savannah Bananas bring their high-octane, fun-filled style of baseball to Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati on June 13-14. They’re set to take on the Texas Tailgaters in front of a sold-out crowd.
Spartanburg Herald-Journal reporter Baker Maultsby contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How Savannah Bananas went from overdrafting their account to becoming a viral sensation
Reporting by Kaycee Sloan, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
