Good Disruption: Why Fans Can’t Get Enough of Banana Ball

UVA Darden.

The Disruption, a lively discussion between UVA Darden School of Business professors Yael Grushka Cocaine and Mike Lennox on cutting edge technologies and practices that are challenging the status quo.

Hey Al, how are you doing on this, uh, warm summer day?

I am doing great, Mike.

Great.

June is my favorite month.

Oh really?

Why?

Why is June your favorite month?

Well, isn't it obvious I'm a, I'm a Gemini.

I'm a June born, so, uh, I celebrate my birthday for an entire month.

I like that.

I like that birthday month versus uh birthday day.

Well, look, you know, on this podcast we love technology, right?

Like we talk about technology all the time, the time we've talked about AI, I don't know, half dozen times on this podcast.

I love clean tech, as you know, and we've talked about that.

But as we've started to do on the podcast, there are disruptions everywhere, and, and not every disruption is always a technology-driven disruption.

Yeah, when you're paying, when you're looking for them, you see them everywhere, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So I wanna talk about a disruptor who is disrupting, um, a very venerable, uh, old industry here.

So I'm gonna start with a trivia question for you.

Oh, trivia.

I'm so bad at trivia.

Go for it.

I think you'll know the answer to this.

What, when and what was the first professional sports league in the United States?

Oh wow, I don't know that I know that.

I mean, what do you think?

What do you think?

Which sport do you think is like sport?

I would have to guess, uh, baseball, um, if I were to guess, um, rough guess of when you think it, it started, uh, I mean, probably.

I don't know, 150, 200 years ago or maybe less, yes, something like that.

That's a pretty, that was pretty good, yeah, knowing that I, I know you're not like, like a huge baseball fan or anything like that.

My mom is, my mom is.

I'll give her credit.

My mom is a big baseball fan.

Yes.

Oh, that was excellent.

OK, so you're 100% right.

It's baseball, and it's baseball by a lot.

So it's 1876.

They're just celebrating their 150th year, uh.

National League was founded in 1876.

Uh, to give with it in perspective, National Hockey League, not till 1917.

NFL, we all love our football, 1920, and then the new kid on the block is actually basketball in 1946.

So, the NBA is the youngest.

The NBA by far and away the, uh, the youngest league there.

So, so baseball's the granddaddy.

It is in the US we call it our national pastime.

Uh, again, it is, it is the granddaddy here.

I do like that it's called the World Series even though basically it's the United States and Canada, right?

I mean, you know, we, we're, we're known for maybe our, uh, our, our willingness to celebrate our awesomeness here.

And so the World Series, just so you know, started in 1903.

So the World Series itself was when they created the American League and then they decided to play each other.

And again, that's been going on for 123 years.

But we're gonna talk about an organization that has upended this venerable old, uh, industry, if you will, or league, which is the Savannah bananas.

Oh, I'm so excited to talk about this.

You know, the Savannah bananas, right?

I know of them.

My cousin is a huge fan and she's been, um, uh, telling me all about it, and I've, I've gone to several baseball games in my life, obviously here at UVA and elsewhere.

I lived in San Francisco in the days of Barry Bonds and saw him, you know, hit several, uh, home, so I know a little bit, but I'm super excited about the Savannah bananas because I do like to see shows and so my sense is that this, this gets everybody excited.

Yeah, and I have not been to a Savannah Bananas game, but I have watched them on TV and it is so much fun.

It is.

So entertaining and uh they're just their willingness to push the boundaries and maybe remembering that sport at the end of the day and I'm, you know me, I'm a very passionate sport fan, but it is ultimately about entertainment and and they have, you know, braed that just to give you a little background uh about them uh they actually got their start as a college summer league team back in 2016 playing in the Coastal Plain League.

Um, but then in 2020, and I, you know, we have our guests who can hopefully tell us more about this, they had their official what they call banana game, banana ball game, where, uh, again, new rules, new introduction of things.

And uh they broke away from the Coastal Plain League in the last couple of years.

They have created their own national touring, uh, group because now it's a group of teams playing banana Ball, uh, and just to put in perspective how they're doing here, uh, this last year, and I know that they're, they're huge and growing, yeah, so in 2025, 113 shows. 2.2 million tickets sold, uh, 1.9 million items of apparel, uh, and, and it's just going bigger and bigger this year.

They're gonna hit 75 stadiums, including 14 Major League Baseball stadiums and 10 football stadiums.

So they're selling out football stadiums at Amazing.

And it's, it's a great time for us to be talking about this given, you know.

Then the excitement of last weekend with the with the NBA kind of finals and everything there and what's going on in New York, congratulations to the Knicks fans, and then all that's going on with the World Cup, like sports, sports, sport is all around us and it's interesting to think before you bring our guest in, tell us, can you tell me a little bit about like in what way.

They're disrupting kind of the baseball league, just kind of from your perspective.

I mean, um, they're changing some of the rules for sure.

They're bringing a lot more entertainment.

Um, one of my favorite rules, and I hope I'm getting this right, that if the, uh, away team hits a foul ball into the stands.

And the fans catch the ball, it's an out.

I just think is brilliant.

Like I love that idea and unfortunately I put some pressure on those fans in the stands.

Like you better catch the ball because this is gonna be an out, um, and again they, they've just continued to kind of innovate different, different pieces, and the entertainment piece is obviously a huge, a huge part of that, you know, I, um, I go every year to the, um, MIT Sloan. sports analytics conference and this year I channel um I chaired a panel or moderated a panel I should say and a lot of our focus was on fan engagement um and we also have alumni at Darden who are involved with uh the Intuit Center in LA and, and, and, and, um, the various kind of teams there, uh, fan engagement and how do you get the audience to take part in what's going on is, is the name of the game right now so everybody.

Interested in this, and what you just described sounds like a beautiful way to do that.

Yeah, well, I think we need to bring our special guests in.

We're so pleased to have Jared Orden with us.

He has been the president of the Savannah Bananas since day one.

He has been with other teams in the industry, the Gastonian Grizzlies and the Burlington Royals, but I imagine this has been a different and unique experience for him.

Uh, Jared, just a pleasure to have you with us today.

Yeah, this is awesome.

I could just hear you both talking forever and ever and ever.

I don't even know why I need to be a guest.

You're doing so well.

Trust us.

We, we need, I think our audience feels differently.

I think our audience is happy that you're here to, to bring us some actual knowledge here.

Yes, yes, but Jared, I would just love to hear in your own words the story, and I'd love to hear about this transition from, like, you know, college, summer league, coastal plain.

And, and then this emergence of banana ball a few years later.

So, so tell us, tell us what happened here.

Yeah, absolutely.

The question that I get, you know, most recently is always, did, did you ever think it was gonna be like this?

Well, no, of course not.

I know it starts out thinking it's gonna be like this, you know, we came to Savannah, Georgia.

In the fall of 2015, basically, when baseball, traditional baseball had existed in Savannah, Georgia for nearly 100 years, you know, since 1926, uh, baseball minor league, right?

Yeah, all, all minor league, you know, the, uh, single A, AA, you know, all, all the different teams and, and all the greats had come through Savannah.

I mean, so many different names and stories and just wonderful things.

So 2015.

The team that was here in Savannah basically said, we're leaving, we're gonna go, you know, get a new stadium in, uh, South Carolina.

And so, Jesse, myself, Emily Cole, his wife, we start this college summer wooden bat league team in Savannah, Georgia.

And so, you know, that's just college players, you know, people from University of Virginia who are, you know, playing for 8 or 10 weeks during the season or during the summer, potentially trying to get drafted by Major League Baseball teams.

It's just a fun place to play it in the summer, and that's what Jesse and Emily had started in Gastonia, that's where I first met them.

And so, we just knew that, you know, small town, summer league baseball, play for 10 weeks, and our vision, if you will, loose terms on vision was just like, can we just bring fun back to Savannah, Georgia and sell a few tickets?

Maybe we'll sell a game out.

We'll see what happens.

You say how big was your stadium, uh, then, or how big is that stadium?

Gigantic.

It was 3000 people, uh, 4000, I guess, 4000, which was the biggest stadium we'd ever, I remember coming to Savannah thinking this is the biggest stadium I've ever seen in my life.

How will we ever have anyone show up to these games?

To to put down a perspective.

I'm, I'm pretty confident UVA's baseball stadium is, is, uh, bigger than that.

Yeah, yeah, it's tiny, but it's, it's fun and it's historic, and the bricks and the Spanish moss and like, there's, I mean, if you could squeeze the bricks, you know, the stories that would ooze out of those things are just fantastic.

And so we fell in love with it, and we just had this idea of let's just bring back baseball to Savannah, Georgia.

Now.

Pause there, we did entertainment, like Jesse, when I first met him in in Gastonia, like we had dancing players, he would do Gangnam Style, you know, between the endings, that was like the most popular song back then.

Uh, you know, we do grandma beauty pageants and toilet paper night, and, you know, salute the underwear night, and we did a waffle burger thing where you put like, you know, two Krispy Kreme donuts and a hamburger, like we were doing crazy things, uh, and he was wearing a yellow tuxedo at that point, and like, so we had a vision of like, make baseball fun.

We knew that, you know, that this first kind of conversation, the disruption is like, we are not Major League Baseball.

Uh, we were not, you know, we don't come from investment, we don't come from like selling a, a business, and, you know, it would be fun to start a baseball team as a hobby, like, you know, we didn't have a bunch of investors, we didn't like, there was nothing that set us up for success.

We don't have a television deal, we don't have a nice stadium, we don't have, you know, we don't have premium tickets, uh, we don't have big sponsorships, we don't have a league, you know, you mentioned all the, the big four leagues, like we don't have a league revenue share, like.

We don't have any of the resources, and so we decided very early on, this is where you see this going today, from day one, we said we are not, we cannot compete like everybody else.

Therefore, you know, we're not gonna go win the World Series, as you mentioned, we're not going to beat the New York Yankees tomorrow, uh, and, and win the World Series.

And so what will we compete in?

And we have just decided since day one.

We're gonna, we are going to compete on the fan experience, and we're gonna compete on fun.

We just believe that we can be the best at making baseball fun.

And so that was that real early genesis, and I think you can see that thread probably woven throughout our history.

That was the early genesis.

And what I push you a little bit.

Oh, I wanted to ask something too, Mike, but, uh, uh, um, just it makes me so happy because baseball for me has always been pitched as a family kind of activity, right, maybe more than any other sport, and this is so in line with that.

So that gets me really excited.

Well, no, and that actually aligns what I was I was gonna ask, which is, um, I spent some time living in, uh, uh, North Carolina in the Research Triangle area, and so we'd go to Durham Bulls games with our young kids.

And what I would observe is that they also, you know, and I think this is true of a lot of minor league parks, tried to build that fan experience, especially catering to children, so there was a nice playground area, and they would do things between innings.

But once the pitch started, right, it, it was the same baseball game we've largely been playing for 150 years.

So maybe could you explain that, you know, so I get the idea of fun and entertaining, but what led you to suddenly You know, maybe break with the sacred cows and say, you know, it may, we will change the rules here a little bit.

Yeah, so, 2016, we do sell out some games, you know, we, we really put some effort into, uh, again, creating tons of value.

We did all you can eat ticket packages from the jump, like, instead of nickel and diming people like you would traditionally get at a sporting event, and this, again, this goes into kind of our innovation and disruption of like, uh, Jesse has this great phrase of whatever is normal, do the exact opposite, and not just, not just opposite for opposite.

It's sake, not just like, oh, they painted it black, we'll paint it white.

Like, no, like, what is the friction and frustration of a quote unquote normal experience and could we just go compete on the opposite?

And so we said, you know what, we're just gonna give everybody the food and drink, and we're gonna charge a little bit more, not outrageous, it was $15 by the way, you get all the food and drink you wanted to.

Uh, and so anyways, we made some of those adjustments early on.

Now you pay $15 for like one Miller Lite.

Major Lake Park, right, uh, and so early on, it was like we were competing on those things, and we were selling some tickets, so 1617, 1819, we're playing college summer league, Coastal Plain league, all the games are actually selling out at this point.

So like, once we got through 1617, 1819, all the games are selling out, uh, but we, we, we're fixed.

We, if you, if you project that into the future.

We can only play 10 weeks throughout the year.

We have a 4000 seat stadium.

Like that's it.

That's flat.

And, uh, and not that we weren't healthy.

Like we're fine, uh, but that's not inspiring to anybody.

That's not inspiring to employees or vendors or community or fans, you know.

No one, no one wakes up tomorrow and is like, all right, we're gonna do the same thing again.

That's, woo, let's go.

Let's go charge the aside from faculty sometimes.

So, um, We don't do surveys.

I know that might feel weird in this conversation, but we're very observant.

And one of the things that we began noticing that, you know, in traditional baseball, no time clock, right?

Long, slow, boring sometimes, and those games would last 2.5, 3, 3.5, sometimes 4 hours.

And so the game would be ending at whatever, 10 o'clock, 10:30, and we had great entertainment, great showmanship, we had fireworks, like we were putting all the effort into it, and what we noticed was at 8:30, 8:45, 9 o'clock.

People talk with their feet, especially those with, with kids, I imagine that's right.

Now, if you were to send a survey, NPS, anything out to those people, how would you rate your experience?

Would you come back?

Would you tell others, like all that stuff, I would.

Put more, I'm not not a gambler.

I'd put money on them rating us eights and nines and tens.

It was awesome.

We loved it.

Can't wait to come back, do it again, keep, and so the survey would say one thing, but we felt like if you go to a Broadway play, or if you go to.

A soccer game, you, you brought FIFA up, or if you go to a movie, you don't get 2/3 of the way through and say, all right, had enough, see you later.

And in any business we have felt like.

They shouldn't just have enough.

What would make them want more?

We want people leaving at the very end saying, I want more.

Encore, encore, please, yes.

We began seeing that, and uh you mentioned 2020, we actually test, we began testing the ideas of these rules in 2018.

We did it quietly.

And then we brought it out in 2020, uh, kind of in a public format.

We were kind of forced to do it just because we didn't have enough games and season got canceled and all this stuff.

And then we posited this question of where will our next fan come from?

Like we are stuck, and so if we're, if we're truly gonna be about the fans, and not just growth for growth's sake, but we, we really truly feel like we've got something fun that more people need to see.

We're on this mission to bring more to these, to these people.

Where is I check real quick?

I'm just curious, you kind of glossed over COVID, but like.

Was was COVID a motivating, like did it or even give you the opportunity to do this then it gave us, uh, thinking time, you know, uh, you know, we did the we did the PPP stuff and we didn't lay anybody off and, uh, we read a lot of books and we came up with some weird videos that we sent out to people, uh, and did you have a season in 20. 20 was there a season that summer we had like a modified season in like July August type thing and then we, we basically didn't have enough inventory of games, so we added on some games at the end of the year and called it banana.

We didn't call it banana ball. we just played by the banana ball rules at that time, but that was the first started introducing it publicly to people.

Well, I love what you described earlier, uh, Jared, like in terms of, you know, uh, where can we innovate and where can we, where is there friction and how can we kind of break some of the rules?

Like, by definition that is disruption.

Like what you're describing is just so beautifully articulated as disruption and so it's just fascinating, uh, to think about, uh, how, how if we step outside our boundaries and what we're used to and we're willing to sacrifice things that until now are considered sacred, I think we can come up with a lot of innovation.

So tell us more about this banana ball.

Like, exactly what is it and how, how does it take place?

Yeah, so 2020, we, we, we test it and we start testing the rules, and we basically think about what are all the friction and frustration points of a traditional baseball game.

Now, we are not anti-baseball, and this was not, it was never meant to be anti-baseball.

We still love baseball.

We got a bunch of baseball players around here.

So you're not competing against the MLB, right?

That's right, because we don't, we're $12 billion.

Or whatever they do annually like oh we ain't doing that and so we just said give you, give you time.

I'm gonna give you time it might happen and so we look at our fans and so, so where's our future fan maybe not today's fan.

Now we can't just say, you know, screw you today's fan like, you know, you're not important anymore, but if we're mission driven, which is to make baseball fun, we have to explain to our fans that we're still on the.

Mission, we hope you're on it with us, but the way in which we accomplish that might look different.

And so we're gonna start experimenting with these rules.

And so we immediately looked at at the time, I was like, OK, if people are leaving at 8:45 or 9 o'clock, let's just make it a 2-hour game.

Let's just 2 hours, put a time on the clock, just tell them the game will end in 2 hours, stay till the end.

And we started looking at, you know, the mound visits and the And the walks, and the bunting, and, you know, all the things that just slow down the game and make it frustrating, and make it boring, and make it slow, and then we were like, OK, what do fans want?

Like if you, if you go to a game and you catch that foul ball, like.

Don't you wanna be the hero?

Like, of course, put the fans in the game, uh, and we mod, we modified the scoring a little bit and made it more like match play golf, you know, where instead of the big blowout where it's 17 to 3 or whatever and no one cares and everyone's left, it's like every inning counts, it's just 1 to 12 to 1, 1-0, you know, every inning is just 1 point, like tennis when it's like tennis, you know, um, and then, you know, we took inspiration from other.

Sports like soccer and hockey, where it's like, OK, no one really enjoys extra innings in baseball because the game just keeps going forever, right?

Uh, what about this one on one penalty kick, shootout style, you know, winner take all thing.

And so literally, we ripped all the players off the field.

It's pitcher versus hitter, and the, you know, the pitcher has to either strike the guy out, or if the hitter puts the ball in play, they have to.

Go all the way around the bases, the pitchers running and chasing the ball out into the outfield, you know, fans are on their feet, they throw it, I mean, it's just, just so much fun.

Now, we didn't get it all right in the beginning, and that's the iterative process.

Uh, if we were, if we had created a video game, uh, the game would have just ended and broken, you know, and very frustrated.

So there was some game theory that we didn't quite get right, uh, but now it's pretty tight, like the game theory is actually tight.

The rules make sense, the fans understand them, the game can end, we've modified a few things, uh, and by and large, we still get 9 innings of baseball in.

In 2 hours, 2 hours, that's amazing.

That's one of my favorites, I imagine you still do this, is that if it's a walk of a thrown walk that if the uh defensive team can get every player to touch the ball and touch first base before the runner gets there, they're out.

Yeah, so, yeah, we call it a sprint.

So walk becomes a sprint, and so, yeah, on ball 4, the, the batter just takes off and starts sprinting around the bases, and the defenders come in, they all have to throw it around and touch it, uh, and now they've, you know, they're smart people, they're athletes, they begin, you know, strategizing around this, and they kind of condense and, so, a lot of times there's actually on a walk, there's a play at second base, where sometimes they tag him out, or if they throw it over someone's head, that guy's running around and and potentially scoring.

Uh, and so we do that in 2020.

So you've taken basically one of the maybe arguably boringest things, a walk, and you turned it into like one of the most dynamic, exciting things.

It's really fun.

So we take that in 2020 and we feel like we have something now.

We're still doing summer league baseball going into 2021, but we say, OK, narrative process, we're not just gonna hard launch this thing, we're gonna test it.

And so, you know, Jim Collins talks about, you know, bullets and cannonballs, and, you know, we're gonna do a rifle shot.

Uh, before we do the big cannonball, and so we do the one city world tour and so we go to Mobile, Alabama, uh, still like kind of half COVID thing, and so we go to the Hank Aaron Stadium in Mobile, Alabama.

We call it the one City World Tour.

We do, we do, um, tour t-shirts and you know how tour t-shirts have all the seats on the back.

We just do Mobile, Mobile, Mo, Mobile, Mobile, like plenty of times in the back, um.

We had to do social distancing and so we had these little signs that said banana butt buffer zone, uh, and we put them on like every third seat or something like that, and the fans stole the buffer zone signs.

They were so excited.

Anyways, 3500 people show up.

Over two nights in Mobile, Alabama to watch the Savannah bananas play the party animals, two teams they've never heard of before, uh, on back to back nights, and the game is played on the road for the very first time.

Now, we then go back to Savannah for the summer.

We play our summer league games there. 2022, we go on a seven-city world tour, uh, from West Palm Beach, Florida to Kansas City, Kansas, and everywhere in Spain.

How many teams are playing?

Still two, still just bananas and our, you know, arch nemesis, alter ego, the party animals, um.

And then we go back to Savannah, we do summer league.

And we start confusing our fans.

They don't know which one they're getting, and that became this real.

I mean, fork in the road, who are you?

What is it, is it what you previously were, or is it the future?

And so like fans would come to our summer league games, and they'd have the rules printed out, like, OK, if I catch a foul ball tonight, it's an out, right?

It's like, no, that was the other thing, like oh wait, what about the twerking umpires he here that no, that was yeah, what about the guy on stilts?

No, it's a different thing.

And so.

Can't confuse your customer, can't confuse your fan.

Who are you?

What are you known for?

And uh we got confusing, and so we had to make a decision.

Are we gonna keep doing the thing that got us here?

Safe, profitable, we know how to do it, repeatable, all that stuff, or are we gonna be make baseball fun, mission driven, finding our next fan, which one are we gonna do?

Uh, we did have a, a, I mean, stroke of luck, the, the league entity, the Coastal Plain League, was being sold to another, uh, another company.

And at the end of the 2022 season, they basically said, OK, everyone's got an opt-in or an opt-out.

Oh, perfect.

If you wanna be in the league, great.

If you don't, no penalty, you can opt out.

And Jessie and I both like.

I think we're out.

I think we're gonna go all in on Banana Ball, and we did, and that turned from a seven-city world tour playing in front of about 150,000 fans in 2022 to a 33 city world tour, half a million fans, to then, as you referenced, a major league stadiums, a million fans in 2024.

Little over 2 million fans in 2025.

Amazing.

That will do 3 million fans in 2026, 2016's Banana Ball Championship League.

That's where we're at.

But one of the things I find interesting with the way you structured the, the teams in the competition, if I understand it correctly, it, you know, a comparable obviously for you all is the Harlem Globetrotters, and they have their nemesis, which is like the Washington Generals forever.

But the sense that, you know, you'd get is like the game's fixed.

It really wasn't about the outcome.

Despite all the rule changes and the like you make, it, it's still a competition, right?

And it's still like, you know, these teams are both have an equal, you know, shot of winning the, uh, winning the game.

Is that, is that right, yeah, yeah, and so to, to emphasize that.

We love, we love the story of the Globetrotters, and they're inspirational by, by so many ways.

They chose the path, and and not neither right nor wrong, but they chose the path of repeatable model, uh, let's make sure that we can scale the Globetrotter brand to multiple cities every night of the week, you know, and so, If someone's in, if you're in Chicago and I'm in Savannah and Yells in in Los Angeles and we all go to a Harlem Globetrotters game tonight, we will all tell each other we went and saw the Harlem Harlem Globetrotters, uh, but did we, you know, what do we actually see?

We saw a repeated version again, not that's their decision, not bad, neither bad, uh, nor right.

That's more purely of a show.

Like it's a little bit more of a show kind of mentality, right?

We felt that the human mind.

With sports wants realness, like, I need to know, my brain needs to know that I saw the thing, the real thing tonight.

And uh so if you go see a Savannah bananas show or game tonight, uh, or tomorrow, you know, we're recording this, uh, and our team's gonna be in Cincinnati tomorrow night, and it'll be the bananas versus the Indianapolis Clowns, you are seeing the Savannah bananas tonight.

Uh, and so now that doesn't scale because the Savannah bananas can't play 365 days a year in 3 different cities.

And so we wanted the realness of it.

And we also want the realness of, it's gonna be a show, but yeah, people like humans, we like winners and losers, we like the game to be something at the end.

And again, going back to the friction and frustration, if we're gonna get people to stay until the end, stakes matter.

Winning and losing does matter to people, and so, uh, we have both, and we have to balance both, and that's part of the game format and also the show format.

But what that forced us to forced us to do to grow the business and reach more fans was add a 3rd team, add a 4th team, at a 5th team, at a 6th team, now here in 2026, make it a league format, make standings, make stats, have a tournament at the end of the season.

We're gonna crown a champion at the end of the season, uh, but still not lose that spirit of make baseball fun.

Can I ask a question about the athletes themselves, like, uh, who, who, who are the athletes that are coming to play on, um, in this, like compared to other leagues, you know, I do some work with the NFL around like salary caps and how the league stays kind of competitive.

Like, tell us a little bit about how you recruit the, the talent for this.

Yeah, early on it was just like, can you, you know, ride a bike, uh, you know, or something like that, please come play.

Uh, it, it has become.

It's become a place of of excitement for not only, you know, former players, but now a place where folks who are just finishing college are are making some real decisions.

I'm like, I think I actually wanna go do that.

And then so, you know, we have a great coaching staff across the board, you know, banana ball operations team, recruiting, uh, player services, athletic training, street like, we, it's a, it's a real operation, right?

And, uh, you know, 4 or 5 times a year.

They have closed door tryouts, uh, you know, kind of invitation only based off of, of players who have submitted interest to, to join the league, and so, you know, they have closed door tryouts or really, really workouts, not even tryout where coaches can observe.

And then this past year, we had basically a two-pronged process, 3-prong really, where, uh, we allowed, of course, we allowed the fans to choose the 1st 3 players that they could save for their team, right?

Like if it's fans first, fans gotta make the right pick, uh, and so the, the initial 4 teams, the fans got to choose 3 players to keep on their team.

Uh, and then the coaching staff was allowed 8 picks for them to keep from last year's roster to keep on the team, and then, you know, there was some heartache and headache, some players didn't get picked, you know, that was, and that's real, right?

That's real sports, and the fans freaked out.

They were like, what do you mean?

My favorite player, you know, and while we explained to them like we know, we understand, internally, we were like, oh my gosh, people.

Like people care this matter and man.

If you have that, I don't care what business you're in, right?

Like if you've got that where people care, there's, you know, it's not just apathetic, that's powerful.

And so the rest of those players plus the new ones got put into a pool, and we allowed the coaches to draft, like a real actual make your decisions, make your picks, make your draft.

And uh some players changed teams, some players didn't get picked, some new players got added on, and that's how we basically built the 25 person roster, 222 to 25 person roster, uh, that we have this year.

We'll do a similar thing for 2027, you know, where fans can keep and and coaches can keep, and then, you know, we'll introduce some new players to the mix.

And uh that's what keeps it fun, and that's what keeps it competitive, and, uh, you know, our fans are really buying into these players, you know, we, we, part of this innovation really is how do we break down the wall between fan and player in a safe manner.

Obviously not something we have to learn, but.

But you don't get that in sports, like, you know, there's a, there's a physical and, you know, sometimes virtual barrier between player and fan, but like, we want to break that down and make sure they understand like, yes, you gotta be great on the field, but We gotta make sure we're serving them.

They are here to see this thing, let's be great for them, not just great for us.

I, I, I really love that.

I bet the, the idea that, you know, there are those beloved players on any sports team, and you lose them for whatever reason, the idea that you might be able to keep them because of that other thing they add to the to the equation.

I'm, I'm a Philadelphia sports fan, and I can think, you know.

Uh, there are various players over the years who just become beloved, and even if they're not at the height of their powers, the, the, you know, the fans, even the very, you know, discerning ones will say, let's, let's keep that, keep that player, and we, we told the players straight up, you know.

The the players who get picked by the fans, they're the highest paid, you know, like we're gonna reward, we're gonna incentivize that, and, you know, they're incentivized by some other things, you know, social media growth and what have you, but like, you know, let's let's make sure that y'all are taken care of.

So how, how do you in that talent evaluation and the like deal with the fact that you have another element.

To performance here, beyond maybe what a traditional baseball, you know, and I, I forget the gentleman's name, but there was a great article about the, um, the player who played collegiate ball, was apparently a pretty good player, but then went the path to be a Broadway star.

And now.

He's coming back and he's doing summer league, you know, doing banana ball, um, but clearly adds a lot because of the entertainment aspect he brings beyond just his, his pitching ability.

So how do you, how do you assess talent when now you're just adding more layers to, uh, to this?

So, two parts, some, there are some uniformed individuals, uh, for example, uh, stilts, you know, who obviously a person on stilts is not going to be highly competitive, uh, in nature.

And so while he may not play 9 innings every single Night, uh, we kind of cast those people, if you will, as these entertainer players, where, hey, your specialty is more this thing, uh, but you've at least got some skill to get on the field and not get hurt and, you know, be a performer, and there's, I mean, the moment when he actually gets a hit.

You know, which doesn't happen every night, but like, even when he makes contact, it's like 40,000 people erupt person on stilts that has made contact with a baseball, uh, and that's just really fun, and so there's that, there's that element.

Where's the strike zone on stilts?

Yeah, so our little umpire, I, I don't know, you know, he is smaller, but uh he stamps on like a bucket, which is a great, great ritual, uh, and so there's that element where it's like we do cast some certain players, uh, but they have to have skill.

And then there is what the coaches bring to the table, which is like, hey, we are looking for, you know, on-field skill and on-field talent, uh, but they know from really, you know, Jesse's point of view, we are not just hiring baseball players.

Like, what are your skills, and can you dance, can you do gymnastics, you know, the trick play is like the real thing that we force, and we force it because, you know, People, people perform on what you incentivize, right?

And so we literally made trick plays a part of the game format where you can earn a point.

By having the most trick plays, it's like, what do you want people to do?

Incentivize it.

And it's so puff but there it is, so we incentivize the trick plays and stand on 1 ft, yes, OK, yeah, and so, you know, the trick play is like a real thing that these guys work on all the time, trying to do new ones, trying to do double ones, trying to do triple trick plays, backflips, behind the back, I mean, all this stuff, and so there's that element.

And then there's, uh, there's a social media type of development which is like, are you good on camera, do you wanna be, you know, in front of people, uh, we have a, a, a developmental team that we affectionately, not affectionately, affectionately, but we call them the visitors, and they just have gray uniforms and it says visitors across the front, and, uh, and so they come during the summer, this is a developmental period for them.

And so they, they practice and they play against each other, but then they run our, uh, summer camps with kids.

Well, what better way to find out about a human being than how they perform and how well they care for a bunch of 7 to 11 year olds and, uh, you know what, and we just explained, and this is this.

This is like hiring employees one on one type thing, like, hey, this is our environment, this is what we expect of you, and uh it doesn't mean you're a bad person if you don't fit into that, you just might not enjoy it.

You know, you're gonna be on stage performing with people, with kids, signing autographs, taking pictures, doing videos, news, like, And if, if that's not for you, no big deal, you might just wanna go find something else.

However, if that is for you, if you thrive in that type of environment, then this may be something for you, and we need to evaluate your skill set, how you perform on the field, how you perform off the field, how you perform.

For our fans, and that's what really goes into a lot of it.

I love that.

And actually, you know, I was listening to you describe like the fan selection and the, the, the, the highest paid, you know, are the ones that kind of voted highest by the fans.

I'm sure that there are some industries that would love to follow that in terms of like talent compensation.

Um, do, do I understand?

I, I thought I read that you also have like coed, uh, athletes.

You recruit and you get talent from all over.

Is that, is that correct?

Yeah, yeah.

So, so every.

I think every team, there may be, I don't know, we have 6 teams, almost every team, uh, yeah, has, has, you know, the some female players on there, and, you know, Mona Davis just joined us for the Indianapolis Clowns, she's, you know, former uh the World Series star from way on back, and, uh, Kelsey Whitmore and Dana, like there's, so, so what has happened is a.

Uh, and Val Perez is our coach of, of the firefighters.

She was a firefighter, still is, was a firefighter.

She was played for Team USA on the women's side.

And so what, what there is, and this is a growing thing, there's a, there's a professional women's baseball league that has just started.

Uh, the US also had, you know, women's professional.

Olympic team or or Team USA and so these are, these are not softball players, these are baseball athletes, uh, and they are good, they are, they can compete, they can get on the field and do the thing.

Now, they are also really excited about this women's professional league, and so they're kind of doing both, and we've like said that seems awesome, and so they're playing like full time doing the women's league, but they're also with us basically every single week, and they might get on the mound.

It might take a bat, it might, you know, do an inning, like they're, they're really talented, and so, uh, we're gonna keep trying to find those people, you know, but again, they have to be good, they gotta be skilled, and so, you know, those are some of the top ones at the game, uh, all of them drafted extremely high in the women's league, and so that is happening.

Uh, you know, we're, we're trying to develop a youth academy as well, you know, to get kids playing this thing and having fun again in sports, and so, you know, it's just all centralized around make baseball fun, make baseball fun, make baseball fun.

And, you know, people always ask about our demographics, and it's like, well, if you're 2 years old or 92 years old or anywhere in between, uh, this is kind of for you.

And so, whether it's a demographic thing or socioeconomic thing or what have you, and this goes into like our cast and our performers like.

We hope you can identify with somebody, you know, we've got the, we've got the, the women playing, we've got the, uh, princess, you know, who's walking around the stadium.

We've got the dad bod cheer squad who's out, you know, we've got, uh, the Banana Nana's senior citizen dance team, which every like 50 year old lady is.

Like my careful, careful Jared, Jared, you gotta go.

Well, gotta be 70, please.

No, no, no, I'm saying every 50 year old lady comes up to us, they're like, my goal in life is to be a banana nana when I grow up, you know, uh, and it's like they're inspirational to somebody, you know, so we.

If if people can come to our games and our shows and identify with somebody or or players, you know, they, they hear a story of a player and they're like, you know what, I grew up like that, or, you know, I was military, or, you know, I came from another country, whatever that is, and so that's what I think is special to people, and what we've realized is this fan base is now, I think a majority of our fan base is identifying for the first time, oh, sports could be for me.

Whereas, generally, I don't, you know, sports is just for like a specific audience, you know, it's like dominated by this specific demo and socioeconomic, and you gotta, you gotta understand the game a lot more, and what we have felt like is let's just break down those barriers, and, you know, I think people are identifying with like, wait, I could belong.

Here and I could be cool here.

And I'm, this is for the first time, I'm really excited to wear a sports jersey because like the bananas are awesome or like the coconuts or, you know, I'm a party animal fan.

I wear a cutoff jersey, you know, big pink and black headband.

And, um, I think that's special for people and we feel like we've disrupted that way to like, Really reach a wider audience.

So Jared, we, we, we're business school professors, so I gotta ask a more business-oriented question here.

Is the org structure for Banana Ball, um, is it like one privately held company?

You don't have franchises, the, you know, the Indianapolis Clowns, like they're not an independent franchise, it's just one organization.

Yeah, yeah, so we own and operate the whole thing, fans first entertainment, uh, you know, we don't have investors, we don't franchise, uh, we are control freaks probably to a blessing and a curse, but, you know, and we don't stadium ownership, is that something you, you do or aspire to do, or is it not necessary?

Perhaps, uh, you know, we lease the stadium here in Savannah and then obviously we play at other people's, you know, stadiums across the country, which is fine, you know, we, we, we bring a great model to them.

It's, it's, you know, we're certainly not making people, you know, a billion dollars, you know, we're not, we're not hosting a country concert or, you know, a FIFA World Cup game.

Right.

But, hey, if you want your building full two nights a year or 3 nights on a weekend when it probably, it might not be.

And it can be a family-friendly show and there's 40,000 people there and we're having a great time and people see that as a positive reflection on your building, uh, people are loving it and, and the venues you're signing up for it and we make it a pretty easy deal for them, you know, because we travel with a zillion people, we run all the ops and the ticketing and the merchandise and the show production, you know, we show up and, and, and the show goes on.

And so, uh, yeah, we own and operate everything.

Uh, we don't do any other businesses, you know, we're, we are like narrow and deep on like this is our thing.

We wake up every single morning thinking what's it gonna take today to do something great for our fans?

What's your, what's your growth aspirations?

I mean, are we gonna see a, a 24 league team league at some point, or I was gonna ask the same thing like what's next?

Like what, what, what, what, what are you working on next, right?

So we just got to 6. this is our first time doing 6.

And our first time doing, we do 3.

We're, we're in 3 cities every single weekend.

So 6 teams are in 3 cities every single weekend, you know, this weekend we're in Cincinnati and Nashville and Manchester, New Hampshire, and that is like we do that from February through, uh, October this year.

We also play some games in Savannah, Championship Series, all that stuff.

So you mentioned it 70. 5 venues, 200 games almost.

Um, and so we like that, you know, that's a, that's a nice, that's a nice, we've had some pretty serious growth so far.

Uh, the big question is international, like, what would it take to do something international?

Now, we only have, you know, we play in front of 3 million fans this year, and so there are certainly a lot more people in the United States than 3 million.

Uh, and so, but there's only so many baseball stadiums in this country, and, uh, there's only so many football stadiums, you mentioned we played a few football stadiums, and some are good, some are not good, some are good for the fan experience, some are not, uh, we have to figure that out.

I have my son just coming back from Japan and uh he was taken to a baseball game in Japan.

It's really big there too, so you know, gigantic and uh in Korea they love if you, if you look up any of the Korean stuff, uh, they put a show spectacle in combination with their baby.

My son said he's never seen anything like it in Tokyo.

Yeah, yeah, very different, uh, and so, but, but what, what drives our business, our flywheel really.

Live events drive, uh, creative content, creative content output, and so like broadcast, social, user generated stuff, so like when we host a live event in Lincoln, Nebraska last week, there is a plethora of creative content that comes from that media, earned media, owned media, all that stuff.

Uh, when that happens, that drives traffic to websites, social, you know, shop, hey, oh my gosh, I've seen this for the first time.

How do I get involved in it?

The traffic forces demand.

People come to our site, they realize, wait, I can't get tickets.

How do I get tickets?

Oh, there's a waiting list.

And so that forces us, that forces demand.

When we have demand that forces us to have more live events and we can just roll that thing over and over and over again.

It's funny you should mention that.

I think the first time I became aware of the Savannah Bananas was because my daughter sharing a viral video of, of the guys kind of singing on their way onto the field there.

So it definitely, you know, earned, earned marketing there.

That's it.

So on the international side, we're trying to figure out, OK, where do we start with the flywheel, you know, like, is it, is it content?

Do we, do we, you know, do we need to develop a Spanish-speaking, and we have a little bit, we have a Spanish broadcast right now, but, you know, do we have a, do we, do we need to fully invest in a year's worth of Spanish broadcast and creative.

And documentary and do we need to do a rights deal for broadcasting in the country.

Uh, or, you know, uh, Asia is the same conversation, like, do we need to, and we, we've got a few Japanese players, one so far that's come on board and it's like, OK, what if he spends 6 months or a year with us and we start generating that creative content, traffic demand, and that forces us to have a live event.

Uh, like, basically the question is, do we have enough demand?

How do we quantify that or qualify that, that tells us and signals to us, yes, do Mexico, or do Australia, or do England or do Korea or do Japan or do Canada, like what is the demand and how do we make sure that we have enough of it, because we do not want to false start.

And say we're coming to whatever we're going to Japan and we put the event on and no one shows up, that would not do well.

Well, I have, uh, at least 1000 MBA students who would gladly join this project and do the analysis for you to analyze what, you know, what does that look like in terms of the right demand.

Um, but Jared, you've been so generous with your time, and I could listen to you describe and tell, talk to us all day long.

This has been an awesome, awesome episode.

So really thank you for being so generous and for the inspiration.

It's wonderful to see somebody so passionate about what they do as you are.

Your, your energy is affectious.

Jarrett, and it, it, I was excited.

I'm even more excited about getting out and, and actually seeing a banana ball game in person.

So we have to put ourselves on the pleasure and enjoyed the conversation.

Thank you so much for being here.

It was wonderful and good luck with it, and we'll be watching for sure whether in the stadiums or outside.

And, uh, let me just go, and as we always do, thanking our producer Gary, our lead researcher Becky, uh, Yael, as always, a pleasure, a pleasure, Mike.

Enjoy the summer.

Good Disruption is a podcast from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

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