Bananas Baseball Entertainment Revolution
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A story about how Jesse Cole transformed a failing minor league baseball team into an entertainment phenomenon by focusing on making baseball fun.
"There's this guy named Jesse Cole, he was an amateur baseball player and got hurt. He was wondering 'what am I gonna do now?' Savannah, Georgia had a minor league team that wasn't doing well. They basically said 'Jesse, do you just want this? Figure out how to make it work and pay us back when it starts making money.'
He bought it with so little money that he overdrafted his bank account by a couple thousand dollars. His wife helped him do it. The stadium was completely empty and he didn't know what to do. He decided 'we're gonna do one thing - make baseball fun.'
He had this naming ceremony and instead of naming it something like the Savannah Trojans, he introduced everyone to the Savannah Bananas. They have a hilarious banana mascot. At games, the players introduce themselves in crazy ways, the umpire drops down low when sweeping home plate while they play 'Get Low' by Lil Jon. They have male cheerleaders, choreographed dances between innings, and a grandmothers' dance team instead of a hot dance team.
They created 'Banana Ball' with no bunts, no mound visits, a two-hour time limit, and if someone in the stands catches a foul ball, the batter is out. Now they have 4,000 people coming to every game. Coincidentally, they went from being the worst team to winning the championship.
They also travel from city to city doing this entertainment-style baseball, and their social media is huge. They've gone from having 100-200 people at games to doing about 6-7 million in sales."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.