Lewis Howes interviews Jesse Cole, founder and frontman of the Savannah Bananas, about building “Banana Ball” as a sports-entertainment product and the personal risks behind its growth. Cole recounts buying a struggling team and arriving in Savannah in 2015 to find phone and internet lines cut and the venue emptied, while carrying what he describes as over $1m in debt. He says the organisation ran out of money early on, sold its house to keep operating, and used aggressive fan-first pricing experiments, including an all-inclusive $15 ticket that initially overwhelmed operations.
Cole describes a decade-long “laboratory” of promotions in North Carolina, then a strategic break from traditional baseball rules after studying when spectators lost interest. He says advisers urged him to keep conventional baseball as a “safe bet”, but he opted to separate from the league model. Cole also discusses scaling to major league and football stadiums, including operational failures he says occurred during the first major league outing, and the internal challenge of maintaining show standards while expanding to multiple touring teams.
On business governance, Cole says he will never sell or take the Bananas public, arguing ownership change would drive fees, sponsorship clutter and decisions made for revenue rather than fans. Separately, he gives a personal account of becoming a foster parent during the pandemic and later adopting two children in January 2024, crediting his wife’s advocacy and describing a Mother’s Day message from a birth mother as a key moment.
Several figures cited (attendance, waitlist size, compensation) are presented as Cole’s claims rather than independently verified in the episode.
Cole says league or venue rules penalised the Bananas for playing music during games in the early years, and that the club chose to pay fines rather than change the presentation. He depicts it as part of a broader push to deliver a continuous entertainment experience.
Read this moment →Jesse Cole says he and his wife Emily went “over a million dollars in debt” after deciding to buy a summer-league baseball team and move to Savannah. He frames the decision as the financial risk that preceded the Savannah Bananas’ later growth.
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