This article appears in the February 2026 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Read more from the issue.
You can make the case that the fastest-growing sport in America is Banana Ball. Three years ago, the Savannah Bananas quit their independent minor league and struck out on their own, barnstorming the country with a cross between a baseball game, a three-ring circus, and a flash mob. The 2023 U.S. tour drew 500,000 fans; in 2025, that number crested 2.2 million, and three million are expected this year. Banana Ball now has six teams in a competitive league, and the 2026 schedule includes 75 stadiums in 45 states, all of which will almost certainly be sold out.
The secret to the Savannah Bananas’ success is a relentless focus on making the experience entertaining, affordable, and fan-friendly. “The phrase Fans First is repeated so many times a day that it lives at the forefront of every thought we have,” said Emily Cole, co-owner of the team with her husband Jesse. “We feel like Banana Ball is for everyone.”
Banana Ball takes traditional baseball rules and puts them through a funhouse mirror. Every inning is a mini-game worth one point, amplifying drama with each at-bat. The ninth inning is a bonus round, where every run is worth a point. Once per game, teams can substitute a “golden batter” to get their best hitter up in a critical situation. Batters can try to steal first base on a wild pitch. If a fan catches a foul ball, the batter is out.
That last one reinforces the priority on fan involvement. Everything is designed to make the game less like baseball’s slow, pastoral stereotype and more like an attention-grabbing event. Players can’t step out of the batter’s box, and coaches can’t visit the mound for a strategy conference. Bunting is banned because, according to the official rules, “bunting sucks.” And a ticking clock limits games to two hours. “We studied our crowds and other baseball crowds for a long time,” Cole said. “There was a mass exiting of fans by the 9 p.m. hour at most traditional baseball games … a time limit became obvious to us as a way to keep fans engaged for the entirety of the event.”
There are other features, including nonstop music, pregame parades, dancing umpires—actually lots of dancing—backflips, behind-the-back catches, pitchers on stilts and things that would make Babe Ruth spin in his grave. But perhaps the most radical parts of Banana Ball are on the business side.
Tickets for Banana Ball are not dynamically priced. They cost $35 in minor league parks and start at $40 in major league stadiums, and they are not sold on Ticketmaster but on the Bananas’ own ticket platform, which includes no additional fees. The flat rate was cheaper than the average ticket price for every MLB team in 2025. The only upsell is a “meet and greet” option for 300 fans that includes field access with the players; those go for $100 to $125.
Tickets are distributed through a lottery for every game, instead of escalating pricing to match fans’ willingness to pay. There’s a priority access “K Club” ($59 in 2025) for tickets and merchandise, but other than that, everyone—rich or poor—has the same chance to see the Bananas play.
Cole told me that “pricing out certain families or people just so we can make more money is the opposite of Fans First.” Fans can buy no more than five tickets, which cuts down on resales, and the Bananas are launching their own secondary market platform, ensuring that unused seats can be transferred at face value without a markup.
It continues. All online merchandise sales include free shipping. All concessions at the Bananas’ home-field park in Savannah, Georgia, are also free, and all-you-can-eat. This isn’t the case at road games on the tour, which are subject to the whims of the various stadium owners. But Bananas representatives try to improve the fan experience at each stadium they visit.
Instead of selling media rights to a conglomerate for Banana Ball broadcasts, the Bananas produce their own programming and license it to ESPN and Turner Sports, so they can specify how the games are shown. All Banana Ball matchups are simultaneously streamed live and archived at the team’s YouTube channel, again for free. (The games got 16 million views in 2025.) There are no corporate sponsorships other than a handful for jerseys and equipment. Contrary to major sports leagues, nearly all revenue is derived from ticket sales and merchandising.
The fair-treatment-over-profit mentality extends to the players. The rosters of the Bananas and the league’s other teams have year-round contracts with full health insurance benefits, unlike minor league deals that only pay during the season. Salaries are well above comparable minor league counterparts. “They come up with ideas and stay in shape all year, and this is the best way to compensate them for that,” said Cole.
When players and fans are respected and prioritized, it’s no surprise that the business side takes care of itself. The Bananas have a reported three-million-person wait list for tickets, and more than 21 million social media followers. The organization has an estimated value of half a billion dollars, and unlike nearly half the MLB, it turned a profit last year. You can have a successful and relatively humane business in sports, believe it or not, by minimizing frustrations and “always put[ting] yourself in the shoes of your fans,” to use Cole’s words.
Economists may look at that long wait list and call it rationing, arguing that better pricing would be more efficient. But given that scarcity is already built into how many games a traveling team can play in a year, the Bananas put the premium on growing their brand of baseball. “We are focused on long-term fans over short-term profits,” Cole said. “Having smaller margins is a great payoff if it means we are creating fans for life.”
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This article appears in Feb 2026 Issue.