Banana Ball Growing and Increasing in Value!

The meteoric rise of Banana Ball popularity and just how much they are worth!

Savannah Banana Dakota Albritton waves a flag during the first game of the Banana Ball Championship series on Thursday, October 2, 2025 at Historic Grayson Stadium. / Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

October 5th, 2025, marks the 10-year anniversary of Jesse Cole’s first step in leaving a mark on this world. That was the day he purchased and took possession of what would become the fastest growing sports franchise in the world in 2025. Recently I wrote an article about the Forbes valuation of the franchise now seen as worth more than $500,000,000! It got me thinking about how that stacks up against the other major American professional sports leagues. The thing to remember we are not talking about a team or even a brand, but Banana Ball is a league – albeit a 4-team league today and in just a little more than 48 hours the team count will experience a 50% growth as they look to go from just 4 teams to 6!

Looking at ten-year valuations of sports leagues get a little murky due to world economies and populations, but I wanted to try to give some perspective on how remarkable this phenomenon of Banana Ball is.

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A post shared by Jesse Cole (@yellowtuxjesse)

Major League Baseball, long known as America’s past time was born in 1876 and due to the record keeping and private nature at that time it is difficult to ascertain the value of the league in 1886 however the one tangible point of reference is the highest paid player in the league 10 years after its inception was just $4,500. Obviously at that time $4,500 is an amazing amount of money but if we adjust that for inflation it would be approximately $191,000 today. Another point of reference is the 22nd President of the United States of America earned a compensation of $50,000 per year versus our current 47th President of the United States of America coming in at $400,000, reflecting a 700% increase. Major League Baseball’s highest paid player was St. Louis Maroons second baseman, Fred Dunlap at $4,500 per year and now you have MLB’s highest paid player Los Angeles Dodgers flame thrower and homerun hitter Shohei Ohtani comes in at a cool $70,000,000 per year, reflecting a 1,555,456% increase!

The NHL is the next oldest American sports league as it debuted in 1917, again 10 years later due to the economic time and lack of public record keeping we have a trouble gauging the value after 10 years of existence. The one point I could find that was the most telling was in 1927 a group lead by Conn Smythe purchased the Toronto St. Patrick’s franchise for $160,000 Canadian which would be a US equivalent today of approximately $3,000,000 that was 1 of just 10 NHL teams in action at that time. Simple math would tell you on the low end that league would be worth $30,000,000 at that time. That would be worth around $500,000,000 today.

America’s most high value professional sports league today tips the scales at nearly 8 billion dollars in value, however back in 1930 as the shield celebrated their ten-year anniversary, they had a valuation of a modest $4,690.78 which translates to $91,000 today.

The NBA has seen its surge in values with different eras of players but 10 years into it’s history in 1956 the value would be approximately $10,000,000 and that equates to about $119,000,000 today.

Now let’s take a look at Banana Ball, in 2015 Jesse and Emily Cole purchased the rights to bring a new summer league team to Grayson Stadium in Savannah, GA. They ended up over $1,000,000 in debt in pursuit of a dream with strong belief and conviction that they could do something different. They did. Today Forbes reports that the league of just 4 teams is sitting at more than a half billion dollars! On Thursday October 9th Jesse Cole will be announcing the 2026 season schedule and two new teams! 

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A post shared by Billy A. Dunn (@billyisbananas)

Clearly half billion is sure to grow with league expansion and an increase in games to be played for 2026. The most amazing part of this is the Cole’s have done all of this without having to give up any ownership percentage as they continue to control 100% of this league. It allows them not to have to compromise on the Fans First concept they have become famous for, and it allows them to continue to grow organically the way they have in the last ten years!

It is intriguing to think what the next 10 years have in store but in my opinion, I think Ol’ Blue Eyes said it best, “The Best is Yet to Come”.

Savannah Bananas first ten years of growth!

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