ACQ2: Building the Savannah Bananas with Jesse Cole, Founder and Owner (Audio)

2025-06-16 - source - Read full transcript

Ben Gilbert (host)David Rosenthal (host)Jesse Cole

Key insights

Jesse deliberately eliminated advertising and sponsorship two weeks before the pandemic hit, converting the team into a pure tickets-and-merchandise business.

On February 25, 2020 the Bananas announced an ad-free stadium, arguing no fan comes to a ballpark to be sold to. This wiped out roughly 15-20% of early revenue but pushed tickets and merchandise to about 95% of the business, keeping every incentive aligned with the fan rather than an advertiser.

fan-obsessed-business-model

The team survived total insolvency by treating years of experimentation as R&D rather than a failed launch.

Jesse and his then-fiancee Emily sold their house, emptied their savings, and lived on $30-a-week groceries in Savannah while the renamed 'Bananas' were booed at the city's St. Patrick's Day parade; they held on because a decade of prior promotional experiments in Gastonia had already proven fans respond to entertainment over pure baseball.

founder-persistence-through-failure

Public backlash to the Bananas name and logo functioned as free marketing rather than a threat.

Jesse argues the team 'hadn't earned anything' when it was purely criticized, but the controversy over the name created curiosity that converted into ticket sales once fans actually experienced a game; the shift happened specifically after opening night's all-inclusive food, dancing, and entertainment overwhelmed skeptics.

brand-building-via-controversy

Banana Ball's rules were engineered one friction point at a time from direct fan observation, not designed all at once.

By tracking exactly when fans left games (via photos taken every 30 minutes over a full year) and timing boring moments like batters stepping out of the box, Jesse identified specific rule changes: strikes for stepping out of the box, a 'walk' becomes a ball-four sprint, a hard 2-hour time limit, and per-inning scoring capped at one point to prevent blowouts.

deliberate-innovation-process

The Golden Batter and last-inning full-run scoring rules were added specifically to guarantee close, TV-watchable endings.

An early scoring format let games end early once a team banked enough points; Jesse's father, a golfer, helped design a fix where the final inning reverts to normal run scoring, guaranteeing games stay close to the finish and giving broadcasters a reason to keep viewers to the end.

deliberate-innovation-process

Jesse studied the Harlem Globetrotters' decline as the direct reason he launched Banana Ball as its own competitive league instead of staying a novelty act.

The Globetrotters were briefly bigger than the NBA in the 1940s-50s, but became scripted entertainment under owner Abe Saperstein and lost relevance once the NBA absorbed their showmanship with real competitive stakes; Jesse wrote a three-page 2022 vision arguing the Bananas needed a genuinely competitive league before a bigger player could out-entertain them.

brand-building-via-controversy

The company treats its debt-free, self-funded structure as the reason it can forgo short-term revenue for long-term fan loyalty.

The Bananas have never raised equity or debt; Jesse says this frees them from investor pressure to maximize near-term profit, letting them keep games free on YouTube, skip lucrative exclusive broadcast deals, and run at low or minimal margins while betting on long-term brand equity.

long-term-over-short-term-profit

Recruiting for Banana Ball selects for entertainers first and baseball skill second, which built a self-reinforcing talent pool.

A stilts-wearing tryout candidate who couldn't otherwise make the roster became the first viral moment after Jesse created an ad hoc 'entertainment player' spot for him; the team now attracts players who are already social-media-native performers, and being surrounded by them pushes new players to develop dancing and content skills daily.

deliberate-innovation-process

The company's asset-light expansion into football stadiums works because it offers cities and venues an economic-impact deal they can't refuse.

The Bananas pay no rent; stadium owners keep food-and-beverage and premium-ticket revenue while the team brings crowds from outside the region (60% of Clemson's 81,000 attendees came from out of state). This let them access idle NFL-sized venues without the capital or risk of a traditional sports franchise.

fan-obsessed-business-model

Owning all Banana Ball teams as a single entity is a deliberate bet that shared upside beats team-level competition for resources.

Jesse argues single-entity ownership prevents any team owner from prioritizing short-term ticket-fee or sponsorship revenue at fans' expense, and lets the company invest in storylines and coach-as-character narratives across teams (the Party Animals, Firefighters, Tailgaters) rather than optimizing one franchise over the whole ecosystem.

long-term-over-short-term-profit

The K Club loyalty program is a low-key membership layer built to guarantee access rather than extract maximum price.

For $59/year, members get guaranteed access to any game, addressing the scarcity created by roughly 3.2 million people on the team's ticket waitlist; the club is intentionally not advertised, growing through word of mouth and community rather than marketing spend.

fan-obsessed-business-model

Books referenced

Profit First - Mike Michalowicz - Jesse and his wife Emily read it during their broke early Savannah days; its lesson to enjoy saving more than spending got them through sleeping on an air mattress with $30-a-week grocery budgets.

Media referenced

Banana Land - show - Five-episode ESPN documentary series (later on Disney+) that followed the 2022 Banana Ball tryouts, including the discovery of the stilts player.
60 Minutes segment on the Savannah Bananas - show - Cited by Ben as evidence of how much national media attention the Bananas have earned, in contrast to Jesse saying he rarely tells the origin story in this much detail.
Acquired episode on the Indian Premier League (Cricket) - podcast - Ben references Acquired's own IPL episode, where they had described the Bananas as 'the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball' - a comparison this episode revisits and complicates.
Acquired episode on Costco - podcast - Jesse says he shared Acquired's Costco episode with his whole staff as a model for minimally value-extractive, scaled-shared-economy pricing (e.g. Costco keeping its hot dog price fixed for decades).

Companies

Savannah Bananas - The Banana Ball team Jesse and his wife Emily McDonald built from a failing college summer league franchise into a national entertainment phenomenon.
Fans First Entertainment - The parent company name Jesse chose when moving to Savannah, encoding the company's core operating principle.
Gastonia Grizzlies - The North Carolina college summer league team Jesse ran and later bought starting at age 23; the 10-year proving ground where he experimented with promotions before starting the Bananas.
Major League Baseball - Discussed as the incumbent whose 3-hour-12-minute games and traditionalism created the opening Banana Ball exploited; MLB later adopted faster-paced rule changes like the pitch clock.
ESPN - Produced the Banana Land documentary and broadcasts Banana Ball games, but agreed to Jesse's demand that every game also stream free and ad-free on YouTube.
Studio Simon - The design studio that created the Bananas logo for a negotiated-down fee the company almost couldn't afford.
Ticketmaster / tickets.com - Hold exclusive ticketing rights at most major league and football stadiums; the Bananas had to build their own ticketing platform and find non-exclusive venue partners to get around these deals.
Netting Pros - Partner that supplies the protective netting needed to convert football stadiums into makeshift baseball fields for Banana Ball games.
StubHub / secondary ticket markets - Sell large volumes of speculative or fake Banana Ball tickets at $300+ average resale prices, a problem Jesse says the company hasn't yet solved.
Harlem Globetrotters - The most common comparison for the Bananas; Jesse studied their history (huge in the 1940s-50s, then lost relevance once the NBA absorbed their entertainment innovations) as a cautionary tale that shaped his decision to launch Banana Ball as its own league.
Walt Disney Company - Jesse studied Walt Disney's philosophy of controlling the end-to-end customer experience (down to building his own government district at Disney World) as the model for eliminating friction in the Bananas' fan experience.

Techniques and frameworks

Fans First principle - The company's core operating rule: no one is allowed to sit between the team and its fans or extract value from that relationship (no ticket fees, no ads, no exclusive paywalled broadcasts).
Idea book / idea muscle - Jesse has written down 10 ideas a day since 2016-2017, treating idea generation like a muscle that has to be trained daily even though 70-80% of the ideas are bad.
Start small, think big - The philosophy behind testing Banana Ball quietly for years (2018 closed scrimmages, a single 2021 'one city world tour') before committing to leaving the league entirely in 2022.
Live-events-to-content flywheel - Jesse's framing: live events drive content, content drives traffic, traffic drives demand, and demand forces more live events - a self-reinforcing loop that also feeds merchandise sales.
Undercover fan research - Jesse and staff would attend games in disguise, park and eat with fans, and track exactly when fans started leaving (via photos taken every 30 minutes) to find the game's real friction points.
Go where others won't go - A Sam Walton principle Jesse cites for the decision to pursue non-traditional venues like football stadiums rather than compete for the same major league ballparks everyone else wants.

Summary

Jesse Cole tells Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal the full origin story of the Savannah Bananas, starting from his first job at 23 running the failing Gastonia Grizzlies college summer team ($268 in the bank, losing $150,000 a year) through a decade of promotional experiments inspired by P.T. Barnum, Walt Disney, and WWE. That decade taught him that a team without the best players had to compete on entertainment, a lesson he carried into Savannah in 2016 when he and his then-fiancee (now wife and "Director of Fun") Emily McDonald took over a lease for a struggling college summer team at Savannah's historic 1926 ballpark. The early Savannah years were brutal: they sold their house, slept on an air mattress, budgeted $30 a week for groceries, and were publicly booed after naming the team "Bananas" - a name the city initially treated as a civic embarrassment.

The turning point was opening night: an all-inclusive ticket model (unlimited food, no fees), a rain-soaked dance number by the senior-citizen "Banana Nanas," and relentless in-game entertainment converted skeptics into fans on contact, even as the team remained seven figures in debt. From there Jesse walks through the deliberate, almost scientific process behind Banana Ball itself - tracking exactly when bored fans left games via photos taken every 30 minutes, timing how long batters wasted stepping out of the box, and using a daily "idea book" (10 ideas a day since 2016) to generate the rule set: strikes for stepping out of the box, ball-four sprints instead of walks, a hard 2-hour game limit, one point per inning to prevent blowouts, and a last-inning exception (co-designed with his father) so games always stay close to the end.

A recurring thread is the company's refusal to let anyone sit between the team and its fans: no advertising, no sponsorship, no ticket fees, and every single game streamed free and ad-free on YouTube even as ESPN and TNT pay for broadcast rights - a stance Jesse says took years of saying no to networks before they granted the exception. The business now runs on tickets and merchandise (95% of revenue), is entirely debt- and equity-free, and deliberately underprices relative to what the secondary market will bear (average resale price over $300 versus face value of $35-60), which Jesse frames as banking long-term brand loyalty over short-term profit extraction - explicitly modeled on Costco's approach, which he shared with his whole staff after Acquired's episode on the company.

The conversation also covers how the team scaled beyond baseball stadiums into football stadiums (paying no rent, letting venues keep food and premium-ticket revenue) and the strategic decision to launch a competitive Banana Ball league in 2022 rather than remain a novelty act, motivated explicitly by studying how the Harlem Globetrotters lost relevance once the NBA absorbed their showmanship with real competitive stakes attached. Jesse discusses recruiting entertainer-athletes (illustrated by a stilts-wearing player who became the team's first viral moment), the economics of touring with 200+ staff, the unsolved problem of speculative secondary-market ticket resale, and the low-key $59/year "K Club" membership that guarantees ticket access without public marketing. He closes by tying the whole operation back to a simple motivation: chasing the moment when a stadium full of strangers sings along together, which he says he still gets goosebumps from every night.

Notable Quotes

"Marketing is not what you say. Marketing is what you do. You have to create an experience that is remarkable." - Jesse Cole

"Whatever's normal, do the exact opposite." - Jesse Cole

"We're focused on long-term fans over short-term profits. It's a big difference." - Jesse Cole

"You're the average of the five people you surround yourself with." - Jesse Cole

"We failed every step of the way, but we're willing to get to the next step [at] bat." - Jesse Cole