Over the next three weeks, the Savannah Bananas and their five spinoff teams will combine to play three games at Wrigley Field, three more at Target Field and games at a college football stadium and eight minor league ballparks.
As has been the case for the past decade -- a span that includes nearly 600 games -- every game has sold out.
The organization told SBJ that they expect to play in front of 3.2 million fans on their Banana Ball World Tour this year, a 75-game tour that includes visits to major and minor league ballparks as well as NFL and Division I college football stadiums in 45 states.
More than 140,000 fans attended the club’s two-game set at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium over the Fourth of July weekend. That follows reported sellouts of, among others, back-to-back 70,000-fan games at Caesars Superdome, 102,000 at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field and 101,000 at Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium. Target Field will host more than 120,000 fans over a three-game stay next month, according to a source familiar with the visit.
The team uses a lottery system for fans interested in tickets in each market. The club handles its own ticket sales. Standard tickets cost between $35 and $60 (with no hidden fees, and premium or VIB (Very Important Banana) meet-and-greet tickets generally cost between $100 and $125 each.
The team said it played in front of about 2 million fans in 2025 for a schedule listed at 72 games, an average of roughly 27,777 per game (through July 9, MLB games have averaged roughly 29,000 per game).
Based on the team’s growing popularity and exposure via a new 25-game television and streaming package on ESPN and Disney+ (with occasional airings on truTV, Roku Sports Channel and the Bally Sports Live App), Bananas’ owner Jesse Cole created a six-team circuit for 2026, but the main Bananas team remains the draw.
Last month’s game at Oregon’s Autzen Stadium averaged 1.2 million viewers on ABC, the most-watched Banana Ball telecast ever, according to Nielsen.
The genre’s original team, the Harlem Globetrotters, have approximately 250 games scheduled in the U.S. this year, as the organization celebrates its 100th season.
Bananas social media followers
The concept is, of course, made for social media. The Bananas’ YouTube channel, for example, boasts 2.6 million subscribers and the company’s other five teams have a combined 610,000 more. MLB’s YouTube channel, for comparison, has 7.31 million. The Bananas’ followers on other platforms are as follows, per Zoomph:
- TikTok: 11.6 million
- Facebook: 5.1 million
- Instagram: 4.4 million
- YouTube: 2.6 million
- X: 244,400
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