Jesse Cole bought a struggling minor-league baseball team in Savannah with almost no money and turned it into a $6-7 million revenue business by making baseball entertainment instead of sport. He introduced Banana Ball, a two-hour format with no bunts or mound visits, all-inclusive ticket pricing, and viral stunts like umpires dancing to Lil Jon. The team now draws 4,000 fans per game and won its league championship.
The best way I can describe this thing is it's like Harlem Globetrotters, but for baseball. And so the story behind this is basically, um, so there's this guy named Jesse Cole and he was an amateur baseball player and he got hurt and he was like, well, what the heck? What am I going to do now? And there's a, I actually don't know which league this is, but it's a minor league baseball league. It's called, I think it's called the Coastal Plains League. Is that what it is?
That's right.
And I actually don't know entirely what that is. I guess, is it like a minor minor league or a proper minor league?
I don't know. I don't know.
So, but anyway, so it has, quote, professional baseball players, but I don't think they make a lot of money. And he bought this team and by bought Savannah, Georgia had a, has a minor league team and it wasn't doing so well. And they're like, Jesse, do you just want this? Just like figure out how to make it work and we'll just pay you. Or you could just, you know, pay us back when it starts making a little bit of money. All right, so anyway, so they— Savannah, Georgia, they had a minor league baseball team. They gave it to this guy Jesse Cole. He bought it, but it was like so little money that he like overdrafted his bank account, but for like a couple thousand dollars. So he didn't have any startup money. His wife helped him do it. And they start running—
the team said like, you know, he's like, how many— great, how many people like come to come to the games? They're like, I don't know, like 100, 200 sometimes. It's picking up. And he was like, oh shit, what did I get myself into? Yeah.
And they give him this stadium and it's completely empty. And he's like, What do I do with the stadium? How do I get people to come? He didn't know anything. And so he goes, you know what, screw it. We're going to make this one thing. We're going to do one thing, which is make baseball fun. And he has like this naming ceremony and they're like, well, what are you going to name it? Like the Savannah, like, you know, Trojans or something. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. Everyone, this is— I want to introduce you guys to the Savannah Bananas. And it's like a hilarious mascot of just a banana. And they're like, wait, what's going on? He's like, no, no. So what we're going to do is we're going to have fun. And so what they do basically is they have normal games in the league where they actually are like trying to win and like doing real stuff. But at the league, even at those games, what they do is like the players will introduce themselves or like the umpire. And there's like crazy videos on TikTok. The umpire, when he goes down to sweep the batter's box, he like drops down low and they play like Get Low by Lil Jon. And it's just like hilarious stuff.
They have male cheerleaders. They do like trick plays. They have like choreographed dances that the players do in between innings. They have like, instead of like a, like a hot, like hot dance team, they have like a grandmother's dance team. So all the, the dancers are really old and move really slow and stuff like that. And then even other things at the game. So he, he said, he goes, when I got this team and he's just a baseball player, right? He's like, I— he goes, I just realized, like, I don't know anything about how I'm going to, like, make this work, but I just put it all on the line. Like, they basically sold their home, overdrafted their accounts, and like, they went all in on this. And he's like, so I read every Walt Disney book and P.T. Barnum book for inspiration, and I realized it's not about baseball, it's about entertainment. And he's like, so I'm going to— yeah, like, we're not here to be the most winningest minor league baseball team. We're here to have the most fun and create the most fun environment that people are going to want to feel like they belong to. And so he's like, you know, what are the things I hate about a baseball game? I'm going to do the exact opposite. Oh, I hate that there's just ads everywhere in the stadium. Okay, I'm going to rip all those down and we're going to put funny things up instead. Because I hate, um, that like, you know, just buying like a beer is like $14. You just feel like you're getting gouged. So they switch their ticket prices to be all-inclusive. So you buy a ticket, unlimited, you know, food and drink or whatever it is. I don't know how they do that with alcohol, but like That's what he says, all-inclusive tickets. And then they, you know, instead of, you know, baseball is really slow. So they're like, it's a 2-hour, like, limit basically to these games. And like, there's no, like, we don't walk up to the mound and talk to the pitcher for like 5 minutes. There's no bunts, there's no— and they did all these things to speed up the game and make it more fun and entertaining.
And then they also have like the normal game. So they play in the league and coincidentally in that league, you know, they won the championship. So they went from actually being the worst team to the most winning team.
And like Ted Lasso shit.
Yeah. So it worked. But then they do this other thing called Banana Ball. So like in between the normal games, they like continue hiring the team throughout the offseason and they travel from city to city and they also host this at their own league or at their own stadium. And they have this thing called Banana Ball, which means there's no bunts, no visits to the mound, a 2-hour limit. If someone in the stands catches a foul ball, the batter is still out.
Yeah, well, there's like a video of this, like someone comes to bat, they're on stilts.
Yeah.
And then they throw out the first pitch, some kid comes out throws a banana, right?
Like everything is gimmicked and their social media. By the way, they have 4,000 people that comes to every game. Look at the TikToks that I posted up there. Did you watch them? They're hilarious.
I've been seeing these over the like last year or so. Like the pitcher does like a funny dance basically before he throws the pitch and it's just like, it's just so likable. Like, that's the best way I could describe it is it's so likable. You, you see it, you're like, I want it. I wish I was there. I wish I was having as much fun as those guys are having. And, and like, I love that they don't take this too seriously and boring the way that it's so counter to everything, everything else you'll see in sports.
Yeah, it doesn't like the bar. The discipline bar isn't exactly like really high, you know, like with wrestling you have to diet and like take it seriously. With baseball, not really as much. And so this team, it's hilarious and I think it's a good business. I read somewhere that it was doing like $6 or $7 million in sales, but I could actually see this becoming— I don't know if it's ever going to be like huge, huge, like multibillion, but I think this would be a sick thing to own.
