Who are the Savannah Bananas baseball team and what is Banana Ball?
Banana Ball, headed up by the Savannah Bananas, has changed the way fans consume sport in the United States. Is the model of the biggest sports team you’ve never heard of an example for the rest of us?
Very few things in sport are completely original these days; organisations, entrepreneurs and billionaires often take inspiration from what is already on the market to turn their seed of an idea into something way beyond imagination.
But while many look to other sports, Emily and Jesse Cole instead got their creative juices flowing by watching the likes of US satirical TV institution Saturday Night Live and global stage success Cirque du Soleil.
And while the late-night live sketch show last month celebrated its 50th anniversary, and the acrobatics phenomenon turns 40 in May, the Coles’ brainchild, Banana Ball, is this year approaching a decade.
You’ve heard of Major League Baseball and the Dodgers, Red Sox and Yankees; but how about Banana Ball, the Savannah Bananas and Party Animals?
Banana ball going barmy
If you’re not familiar with baseball’s hottest craze, the youngsters around you will be. With over 200m likes on TikTok and countless dancing baseball players clogging up the FYP (that’s what Gen Z call the “for you” page, adults) the Savannah Bananas might just be the biggest team you’ve never heard of.
They dance, engage with the crowd and cause fun havoc – as well as playing ball.
“When we first launched, we were just a normal college summer wooden bat league team,” co-founder of team and league owner Fans First Entertainment Emily Cole told Morning Wire in March 2025.
“And in 2017 we started experimenting with what would now be known as Banana Ball, but it was for us to just experiment and see if we could create our own thing.
“What has developed is that we have four teams, with two more being added this year, and we own the entire league.
“We control the experience from start to finish. We wanted to bring it all in-house and make sure that everybody was entertaining, down to the umpires.”
It sounds pretty small scale, right? But this season Banana Ball, headed up by the Savannah Bananas, will head from their 5,000 capacity Grayson Stadium – which in the past has hosted the likes of Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson – to 18 MLB stadiums and three American football stadiums.
Expansion
The season begins this month and will see the Bananas joined by the aforementioned Party Animals, as well as the Firefighters and Texas Tailgaters for a 39-game tour.
They’ll stop off at the 81,500 capacity Memorial Stadium, the 70,000 capacity home of NFL side Tennessee Titans, and the Bank of America Stadium – who play host to the Carolina Panthers – in addition to games at the likes of the Yankees, Red Sox and Angels.
“We take a lot of inspiration from the WWE,” Cole says. “We study them and we study Cirque du Soleil. We study Saturday Night Live and we get a lot of inspiration from those entertaining groups like Blue Man Group.
“This is not a new concept, but it is new in this realm, in the baseball realm.”
Though chiefs of cricket competition the Hundred will frown upon the comparison, Banana Ball seems like the utterly mad new kid on the block that eventually becomes a staple: it will not interfere with what traditionalists love but offer an alternative.
Across the pond, here in the capital, West Ham United’s London Stadium hosts MLB matches every two years. There will be no game this summer after plans to take the overseas game to France failed.
But Cole admits that they’ve had talks about hosting matches in London, where a European audience could be game-changing for them.
They have no sponsors – by choice, according to Cole – and no revenue from commercial adverts on hoardings. Instead they’ve got a loyal fan base who buy tickets that come without fees.
Savannah Bananas in London?
This back to basics, fan-to-player approach seems to be what is attracting punters in their thousands.
“Going international is very interesting to us. It’s definitely on the horizon,” Cole concludes.
“Everyone thinks we were just going to go to more baseball stadiums, but now football stadiums are coming up, and cruise ships.
“As long as we continue to raise the bar on how we interact with fans and how we create fans for our brands, that will always be the main goal.”
Amid the barminess of the Savannah Bananas and Banana Ball there’s a purity there. Sport is so commercial and profit-driven that Cole’s offer of fun and feelgood is refreshing.
The aforementioned description of the biggest team you’ve never heard of rings true, but it won’t be that way for long. Let’s play ball!
This article was published in March 2025