Not Customers. Fans For Life.

14 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this short dialogue, two speakers discuss how live events and rituals can turn casual attendees into lifelong fans. They describe the "banana baby" tradition that began in 2016 at Bananas games, where a baby in a banana costume starts the game, creating a memorable ritual that families have followed for over a decade, traveling across the country to attend games and camps. The conversation shifts to an entrepreneurial perspective, emphasizing the importance of focusing on the lifelong value of fans—viewing them as long‑term subscribers who will repeatedly attend, buy merchandise, and maintain emotional ties—rather than trying to maximize short‑term cash extraction. The speakers highlight nostalgia, generational loyalty, and the strategic advantage of building deep, ritual‑based connections that endure for decades.

Chapters

Every single day, every day I want to create a fan. It's a different game.
And it's a long game, right? It's not old enough yet, but when I was your age, my dad took me to Bananas games and I'm going to take you to a Bananas game.
Yes. We did this first game in 2016, our first year. We have a banana baby. So we have a baby go into a banana costume and lift it up and all the players in the whole stadium is going, "Na, Sabine, na, na." And it's kind of a ridiculous ritual to start the game. And we've kept it every day. It's been a tradition. One of the first original banana babies now just went to our banana ball youth camp. They're going to all the games, literally a baby. And so for the last 10, 11 7 years they've been a part and their family travels around the country to come see shows. And that's what I hope, it's a nostalgia in 30, 40, 50 years.
And this, this is what I appreciate about you as an entrepreneur more than most businesses. There's a fear that if we don't cash in now, we're gonna lose the customer. So let's max out the number amount we can get because you never know, dot, dot, dot. Where what you're saying is what's the lifelong value of a family? You know, subscriptions, the obsession of every business now. These are basically lifelong subscriptions because people will come as much as they can for the rest of their lives. Yeah. And buy the merchandise and watch the game.
They travel around the country. They have signs with all the places they've gone. I don't even think about generational, like the value. I think of it as like, how do you continue to create fans in these moments? And when they think back in 20, 30 years, wow, I remember when I saw it, it was here and now it's here.