Since Day 1, our mission has been Fans First and Entertain Always.   

For the past ten years, we’ve worked to create an unforgettable experience for you and put on the Greatest Show in Sports.   

Your support has given us the opportunity to dream big and do things we’ve never imagined with the Savannah Bananas and now, Banana Ball.   

As we step into 2026, we have our biggest challenge yet as we launch the Banana Ball Championship League.  

We believe it’s truly Fans First to take you inside the league, the organization, and the business. We are not a public company.  We know we have no obligation to share these details. But we believe we have a responsibility to you to share who we are, what we stand for, and the ‘why’ behind our decisions.   

Also, we think it would be fun! It’s fun to look back on the last year and share where we are…but it’s even more fun to share what we are working on for you and what’s next in the year to come.   

We love to do what others won’t do and go where others won’t go.    

We’re not afraid to share some of our failures, which in Bananaland are aplenty. (From misspelling our first Bannanas T-Shirts, to our first All You Can Eat nights in Savannah, where fans waited almost two hours for food, to having the transmission go out on ESPN, to the infamous horsehead race, to the 2025 Savannah Ticket Debacle, just to name a few)  

But more than anything, we love to dream. This entire journey has been a dream for many of us.   

For the hundreds of people in our organization, this has been the most unbelievable journey, and we want you to be a part of it in every way.   

This all started because you chose to Go Bananas. So, here for the first time is a look behind the peel. Enjoy the Show!  

 

2025 Fan Report 

Our relentless focus on the fan experience and tremendous fan support helped us achieve a record year in 2025.  

Because of you, we broke records for the number of fans in attendance at our shows, the number of fans who ordered merchandise, growth in social media followers, views, and engagement, and television and streaming broadcast viewers.  

To anyone and everyone who saw us at a live show, bought a t-shirt, followed us on one of our social media accounts, or watched one of our broadcasts…  

THANK YOU.    

In 2025, we played 113 shows and sold 2.2 million tickets. Banana Ball came to college towns, minor league stadiums, MLB stadiums, and three NFL stadiums. We are fortunate to see a 91% redemption rate for our tickets, which is well beyond the industry standard for sporting events.  

We served 787,000 fans Banana Ball merchandise in 2025, with 621,000 coming at our live shows and 166,000 fans through our website.  A total of 1,966,000 items were ordered by the fans, both in person and online. While Savannah Bananas gear remains extremely popular, we are encouraged by the growing fan base for the Party Animals as well as the newly announced Loco Beach Coconuts.  

Our social media accounts gained 12,662,884 followers and passed 35,000,000 total between all teams and the Banana Ball channel. We believe this is due to our relentless focus on capturing and creating fun and engaging content our fans have come to know and enjoy. Our players, cast, and characters also continue to grow in their popularity as well with their commitment to entertaining fans on and off the field.    

We continued our commitment to keep our games free for fans to watch live on YouTube. In 2025, we had over 18 million views of our Live Shows on YouTube.  Our most viewed livestream was on June 1st in Anaheim with 571,048 views. The highest peak concurrent viewership was 37,119 on July 19th in St. Louis.  

Additionally, we had multiple nationally broadcast games on ESPN, CW, Roku and TruTV.  All games on ESPN, CW, and Roku averaged over 500,000 viewers, with the July 4th show at Fenway Park having 837,000 viewers on ESPN. TruTV also saw a 29% increase in viewers in 2025.  

Our Banana Ball World Tour Selection Show in October aired on ESPN2 and YouTube and had a combined 458,650 views. We announced our two new teams, the Loco Beach Coconuts and Indianapolis Clowns, and an ambitious schedule for 2026, playing over 190 games in 45 states and 75 stadiums.    

Over 4.2 million fans joined the Banana Ball Ticket Lottery List in the three weeks following the Selection Show.   

We also tested a new event, the Banana Ball Player Draft, in November, where 134,806 fans tuned in to watch on YouTube.   

It was a monumental year by every measure. Our company has grown dramatically since only selling a handful of tickets when we first started in 2015.   

While we are proud of this growth, the metric that matters most to us is our ability to build the most Fans First company in the world.    

To do that, we must obsess over every step of our experience and put ourselves in our fans’ shoes. From purchasing tickets, to parking at our stadium, to walking in the gates, to getting merchandise, to the audio experience, to the upper deck seats, to the last impression leaving the stadium, to sitting at home and watching our broadcast.   

We must be relentless in rooting out any friction in the entire experience. We will not settle with the mindset that some things are out of our control. While that argument can easily be made as we play at stadiums all over the country, if it’s our event, we will work to make sure every part of the experience is unforgettable.   

We know we have a long way to go to make that a reality. However, we will play the long game for our fans and work hard to take control and ownership of even more parts of the experience in the years to come.  

Our focus remains on creating long term fans over short term profits.   

Ideas are everything in our organization. Money doesn’t excite us. Ideas excite us. We see ideas as our currency and money as fertilizer, used to help grow our ideas and improve the experience for our fans.   

We will continue to experiment and make bold decisions when it comes to improving our fan experience.   

We will remain focused and put our time and effort on the main things that impact the fan experience the most.  

 

 “The Greatest Show in Sports” 

We built Banana Ball by putting ourselves in the fans’ shoes and looking at any part of the experience that was long, slow, or boring.   

This meant changing the game with a goal to make it faster and create non-stop entertainment for you.    

We believe we can be the best in the world with our live shows and will continue to work to deliver the Greatest Show in Sports.   

To be world-class, the “Greatest Show” does not just start when the clock starts.   

The show starts as soon as you arrive at our event. We will put added focus on the parking lot experience, especially with the Tailgaters, as well as our rope drop entrance and the entire plaza experience.    

We know coming to a Banana Ball show for many fans is a bucket list experience, and often, fans arrive hours before to meet our players, cast, and experience the show.   

This commitment by fans will be met by an equal commitment by us to make sure every moment is intentionally designed for their enjoyment.   

We want to continue to break down the barrier between fans and our players and cast. We want to bring the show to you, from the parking lot to the Upper Deck.   

We will put added focus on the Upper Deck experience in 2026. As we play in larger venues, including more football stadiums, we know we will be serving hundreds of thousands of fans who aren’t sitting right behind home plate.   

We plan to have more cast and more players in the Upper Deck and sections further away from home plate than ever before. We plan to create more surprise and delight moments and bigger entertainment moments to make these sections a big part of the show.   

We want our fans in these sections, no matter how far from home plate, to say these were the best seats in the house because of the show and special attention they receive.   

We will also focus more on the Videoboard experience. We have no rules on when and what we can show on the Videoboard. Expect us to create some more unexpected moments for fans here in 2026.  

Nightly, we are committed to producing brand new shows for our fans. This includes creating new performances, including walk-ups, dances, trick pitches and trick plays, celebrations, and bringing in new special guests. We will continue to work to create 10-15 brand new moments in each show for all six of our teams.   

We are always in search of our Gold Standard, which is something that is loved by the fans at our live show and by our fans on social media and the broadcast.   

We’ve learned that big walk-ups, celebrations, and special guests have become big winners in this category over the years.   

We will experiment more in 2026 with moments outside of these proven winners.  From outrageous in-game interviews and on-field mic moments to dugout performances to larger-than-life entrances, no big idea will be thrown out.   

This will increase our failure rate. And we will have more moments that don’t work as planned. However, we have a responsibility to you to keep our show fresh and keep you entertained, if it’s your first show or your 100th show.    

We want fans to see things they’ve never seen before on a baseball field.  We will push the boundaries of what can be done at a sporting event. We never want any show to be stale and hope nightly you will say, “You Wouldn’t Believe” what they did tonight.   

  

Investments

We are investing more than $10 million in our live shows alone. From cast, crew, and new characters to special effects and new equipment, this is substantially more than we have ever invested before in our shows.   

This year will feature Broadway Stars, national recording artists, bigger stage sets and special effects, audio engineers, technical directors, choreographers, show callers, and stage directors, new costume designs and props, and more immersive experiences for our fans.   

With the Firefighters Show alone, we are investing close to $1 million in just the cast, special effects, and the equipment to deliver a show unlike any other. From fire effects on the field during the game, to national recording artists bringing original songs, to world-class ladder artists, to one of the most successful drumlines in the country joining us, we are plussing this show dramatically in 2026.  

Our two new teams, the Indianapolis Clowns and Loco Beach Coconuts, will be our most challenging shows to build yet. This is our first time launching two brands at the same time and having them at the “Greatest Show” standard in time for the season.   

We are proud to partner with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to bring back the Indianapolis Clowns and bring their story to life. As the last remaining Negro Leagues Baseball Team and the first team to bring entertainment to baseball, we have added responsibility to build their legacy and take their show to the next level.  

We have teamed up with Cirque Du Soleil, with both the Clowns and the Loco Beach Coconuts, to bring on some of the most talented acrobats, jugglers, dancers, contortionists, and international talent to Banana Ball.   

These are the first of many bold investments we make in the Clowns and Coconuts shows in the years to come.   

We believe that as AI continues to develop, the world will be hungry for human connection. While businesses invest heavily in AI, we will make bold investments in our human experience to deliver unforgettable moments in real life.   

It would be impossible to deliver these experiences without extraordinary people. We are proud to now have over 700 year-round and seasonal team members who have embraced the Fans First Way. On paper, it does not make sense to travel to each city on our tour with between 150-200 people.   

This travel investment alone is over $15 million a year just to move people from place to place. But we believe our people and cast are worth every penny when it comes to personal interaction and delivering Fans First moments for you.   

We will continue to invest heavily in bringing the most Fans First people in the world to serve you. With over 12,000 people on our waitlist to work with us, we are grateful to have an amazing pool of people to select from as we grow.    

  

Players

Our players are some of the most talented and entertaining players in the world. Watching them grow from baseball players to entertaining Banana Ball players has been a joy to watch throughout the years.   

We are welcoming 65 brand new players into the Banana Ball Championship League in 2026. From former All-Star and World Series Champion, Jackie Bradley Jr., to numerous high-level former draft picks and minor league prospects, to our new Primetime Coaches, Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard, the level of play will be by far the highest it has ever been.   

While the on-field talent has certainly increased, we are most proud of the character, connection with fans, and entertainment level of our players.   

Being a Banana Ball player takes a special type of person: One who is more obsessed with creating fans than personal success; One who is equally focused on creating the Greatest Show for our fans as on winning the game; One who is obsessed with raising the bar and doing things on a baseball field that no one has ever seen before.    

This commitment and focus are what make Banana Ball players special. While we’ve been fortunate to have thousands of players reach out to join us, we will be relentless in keeping the highest standard of people and most Fans First players as a part of our organization.   

We will also continue to invest heavily in our players to deliver an unforgettable experience for you.   

This year, we are proud that the average salary of a Banana Ball player has climbed to over $100,000. This number has risen annually based on our growth and will continue to rise based on the number of fans we serve each year.  

Each team will play around 65 games during the year, which is 100 fewer games than MLB players, Minor Leagues, and any comparable league. This allows the players to stay fresh, healthy, and committed to bringing their best every night to put on a show and connect with you more than any other athlete in the world.   

Our challenge for our players in 2026 is to bring more tricks, more unique celebrations, and more never-before-seen moments to the field.   

Our goal is for each player to provide unique Fans First moments every night to stay connected with our fans, and to never forget this is who we play for and the reason we get to do what we do.     

  

Competitiveness

With the Banana Ball Championship League launching in 2026, the competitiveness of the league has been a big topic.   

We built the Banana Ball Player Draft to increase competitiveness and give new expansion teams the opportunity to compete more with the established teams.    

We understand how, for some of our biggest fans, seeing their favorite players not get drafted or go to different teams was hard.   

We are willing to be misunderstood as we experiment with ideas that we believe will build a better show and a better league, and better storylines for the long term for our fans.  

Delivering the Greatest Show remains our focus, but increasing competitiveness and stakes will only add to the show.   

Expect more events in the future to increase stakes and storylines for our players and teams.   

  

Broadcast

We are investing $13 million in our Broadcast production in 2026. This is by far the biggest investment we’ve ever made in the history of our company.   

This includes building new control rooms, purchasing state-of-the-art equipment, and hiring world-class producers and directors from the NFL, NBA, NHL, and Esports.    

For years, our focus has been on the live show, with the broadcast as a means to capture it and share it with fans.     

We now have millions of fans watching our shows from all over the world. We have a responsibility to level up our production and make it world-class for you.   

This starts with the vision. Often, we hear from fans the broadcast is nothing like being at the live show. We understand and agree completely. With the live show, you are a part of the atmosphere and can feel and see everything in person. You can connect directly with our players and cast, and you can feel part of something with 50,000 of your closest Banana Ball friends.   

However, with our broadcast, we believe we can give access unlike any other sports team or league in the world. We do not have rules or red tape on how players can interact on camera during our shows. We can have multiple players mic’d up, on-field cameras, behind-the-scenes shots, and experiences that fans have never seen before.   

We want fans to feel like they are always right there with our players. We can see the fourth wall being broken with players talking to fans during the game. We can see heart rate monitors on the Golden Batters during the biggest moments of the game.   

The question remains, where can we go where no one else will go?  

With us directing, producing, and running our broadcast from end to end, we will push the boundaries on what can be done for our fans.   

This will be messy as we experiment with things we’ve never done before. Some things will fail and fail gloriously on both YouTube and on National TV, but will get through the messy to get to the great.   

We learn by doing and hope to learn more in the years to come as we challenge the conventional way to broadcast games.  

Overall, we know the show will never be perfect. It’s the pursuit of putting on the Greatest Show that drives us.   

  

Merchandise

Our fans continue to support our teams through our merchandise more than we could have ever imagined. This a product of creating brands that our fans love. We must be vigilant in creating products that our fans love, as well as serving them faster and more efficiently.   

For years we have committed to free shipping for all online orders in the US for our fans. This, in addition to paying all sales taxes for fans, has cost the company millions of dollars.   

While most companies pass this on to the customer, we believe a $30 shirt should be $30 whether you buy it online or in person. It shouldn’t be $39.50 with shipping, handling, and taxes.   

While we know this is just a small part of the shopping experience, we will always eat these costs for our fans.   

The product selection, ease of ordering, and how fast our fans can get their merchandise remain paramount.   

We’ve invested in a 100,000 square foot warehouse, as well as a best-in-class inventory and fulfillment system to serve our fans online faster and more efficiently. This worked this past holiday season as we saw a 47% increase in orders being fulfilled and delivered thousands of orders a day.   

As we serve more fans, we are working with our vendors tirelessly to receive higher-quality product faster with great pricing to share with our fans.   

In addition to adding unique items across all brands, we are going to invest more in a deeper and broader selection of authentic autographed and game-used memorabilia and collectibles.  These items will be rolled out throughout the season in 2026.  

One of the biggest areas of focus will be on our live event merchandise experience. We experimented in 2025 with large covered “shopping tent” experiences in front of the stadiums. This dramatically increased the number of people who could be served at once and the speed of ordering. We will add more of these experiences in 2026.  

We know fans want to shop, but also don’t want to miss any part of the show. Our ability to increase the speed of service both outside the stadium and inside the stadium is one of our biggest priorities.  

We have a goal of serving fans within 15 minutes. While we know this is currently impossible at peak times right before the game, we are continuing to look at every opportunity to save minutes and seconds for our fans.   

We are constantly timing merchandise lines as we know this metric matters most to fans. We will look to break records on our speed of service in 2026.  

Ticket Experience

Our ticket experience is one of the most misunderstood parts of our entire business. It is also one of the areas where we can improve the most for our fans.  

The number one question we get as an organization is, “How do I get tickets?”  

The simple answer is to join the Lottery List in October. However, we know this is not the answer most fans want. With over 4.2 million fans on this list, the demand far exceeds the number of tickets available.   

We’ve made it our goal to dramatically increase the opportunity for fans with more tickets available every year. This year, we will sell more than 3 million tickets to fans, which is a significant jump from when we first started touring in 2023 and sold 500,000 tickets.   

Next, we are proud to launch the Fans First Ticket Marketplace. Our goal is for this to be the first place fans look if they do not win the lottery. This is the first-ever secondary ticket market with tickets exclusively at face value, no ticket fees, and no service fees. We will absorb these costs.   

Finally, we are proud of our K Club, which first launched quietly in 2023 and has been growing every year, and has surpassed 40,000 members. Each year we welcome in a new class of K Clubbers who are our biggest Banana Ball fans and come from all over the country.  This group gets access to tickets first and gets their pick of their favorite cities on the Tour.  

  

Pricing  

Since Day 1, we’ve been committed to Fans First pricing on all our tickets.  

This includes no ticket fees, no convenience fees, no service fees and we pay your taxes.   

Our tickets start at $35 for all minor league stadiums and $40 for all Major League Stadiums and football stadiums. These prices have remained the same for years.   

These tickets have been priced dramatically lower than what the market demands. We’ve been advised to increase our prices and that would decrease demand. But, we are committed to always have Fans First pricing.   

One of the biggest challenges and misunderstandings is that many fans believe our tickets are hundreds of dollars. We constantly see messages and receive emails from fans saying, “I’d love to go, but I’m not spending $500 a ticket.” The prices these fans are seeing are not our prices. These tickets are either being sold by the venue directly or listed on unauthorized secondary ticket websites.   

In the years to come, we will look to get back more tickets from the venues. We’ve seen a higher percentage of the tickets they sell get on the secondary market. We’ve also seen a lower redemption on tickets. The fans buying from them are not our biggest fans, and we will work hard to take control of more of these tickets.   

  

Fans First Promise

We are committed to putting the fans first with every decision we make.   

Our goal is to make constant improvement in every part of the experience for our fans. Sometimes we fail to meet these expectations.  

In 2025, that was the case with a group of fans hoping to get tickets to see the Bananas in Savannah.   

We had a limited number of tickets available and intended to send to a small group of 4,000 fans. Instead, by mistake, we sent the offer to 44,000 fans.   

When tickets sold out immediately, 40,000 fans were reasonably upset that they did not get a chance to get tickets.  

One mistake turned out to be a huge failure to live up to our Fans First promise.   

Our President, Jared Orton, immediately sent an apology to each of the fans and offered the opportunity to get free tickets to any game on the tour. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with 100,000 tickets being secured.   

However, what we saw immediately was a lower redemption on tickets. Fans would take the tickets, but only 70% of fans were showing up. This was disappointing, so we offered to buy back the free tickets from fans so that we could offer them to fans who would come to the game.  

We worked through this for the entire 2025 tour, trying to do everything we could to make sure as many of these fans were taken care of, but also that every seat was full.   

Overall, this cost us $6 million in lost ticket sales and buybacks.   

But we will make this decision every time as we remain focused on creating long-term fans over short-term profits.
 

What’s Next

Fans First. Entertain Always. This will forever be our North Star.  

As we look ahead, our focus remains simple and demanding. We must continue to be fanatical about every part of the fan experience. Not just the big moments, but the small ones. Not just what happens on the field, but everything that surrounds it.   

We believe the future belongs to organizations that are willing to listen closely, learn quickly, and put people first. That’s the work we’re committed to doing for you.   

Banana Ball was our first dream and our first invention. The truth is, no one asked for it.  

It came from watching fans leave games early and putting ourselves in your shoes.   

We asked, “What if there was another way?” A way that was faster and more entertaining.  

This mindset hasn’t changed, and it never will.   

We will continue to start with a blank slate and ask, “What if?”   

And then we will test, experiment, learn, and try again.   

We started as a small college summer baseball team in Savannah, selling only a handful of tickets.   

Years later, Banana Ball got its start with a One City World Tour in Mobile, Alabama, in front of just 3,500 fans.    

Start Small. Dream Big.   

This belief guides everything we do.  

We will never stop dreaming big for you.   

That means dreaming up more ideas, testing more ideas and learning faster than any other organization. It means doing things that are hard and things that scare us.   

From new uncharted places to play, to larger-than-life events, to building immersive lands for you, nothing is off limits.   

If we need to disrupt ourselves to serve our fans better, we will.    

Our Imagination and Differentiation will define us.  

Normal gets normal results. Whatever’s normal, we will do the exact opposite.  

What was once different will eventually become normal.   

When it does, we will push again. We’ll challenge the way things should be done and focus relentlessly on what could be done for our fans. Especially when it’s never been done before.   

We learn by doing. We are not afraid to try anything that we believe can be more fun, more engaging, and entertaining for fans.   

Our fans’ expectations will continue to rise, but I can promise you, no one has higher expectations than we do.   

We will never stop plussing our show and your experience to the highest standard.   

That commitment drives us on our quest to create one billion fans, one fan at a time. It starts with every moment, every detail, and every fan we serve today.   

 The First Inning

 
No matter how far we’ve come, we’re just getting started. We’re never satisfied. We’re always committed to getting better every year, every month, and every day for our fans.   

We remain in the first inning.