Jesse Cole | He Was $1M in Debt… Now 5 Million People Want His Tickets

James (0:00)

You own a baseball league, Vavair, Banana Ball Championship League.

Jesse Cole (0:03)

I realized I loved playing the game, but watching the game bored out of my mind. And I said, how do you bring back that same love? And so you had to change the experience.

James (0:09)

Mr. Jesse Cole, you and your wife went a million dollars in debt to be able to build the scene.

Jesse Cole (0:14)

Everyone expected us to fail, and we did. We sold two tickets in our first few months. And on January 15th, 2016, we got the phone call, we were out of money, couldn't make payroll. So we had to sell our house, empty our savings account, sleeping on an air bed, we were down to nothing.

Jack (0:24)

What were some of those early changes that you made to the game that got more people to show up to the park?

Jesse Cole (0:28)

One experiment can change everything. I was meeting with a company and trying to get them to come out to this college summer baseball game. They're like, no, we don't like baseball. You're lowest level. We're not going to come. I'm like, no, it's different. It's a show. And she's like, well, what do you guys do differently? And I was like, well, the players dance. She goes, they do? I go, yes, yes, they do. At that point, they never did.

Josh (0:43)

You did something incredible, literally create a new sport.

Jesse Cole (0:47)

The greatest innovation starts from putting yourself in the customer's shoes and saying, what are the friction points? What are the frustrations?

James (0:52)

Jesse, if all of us sitting here were to die tomorrow, you could leave one last guiding principle with the younger generation. What would that be?

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to the School of Hard Knocks Podcast. I'm James here with Jack and Josh, and we have an incredible guest for you all today. As you can see, we're not in a podcast studio right now. We're at the Texas Rangers Stadium, and we are sitting down with Mr. Jesse Cole. You own a baseball league, my bad. How does that feel genuinely? This is not just a small baseball league. I mean, you started Banana Ball Championship League, Fans First Entertainment, and really, this thing has not just national, but now global notoriety, which is just fascinating. What does that make you feel?

Jesse Cole (1:33)

Well, it's special, but it's an iteration. I started as a GM, I actually started as an intern first of a college summer team for two months. Then I became a GM of a college summer baseball team. Did that for years, then finally became a managing partner, then bought that team, then started a brand new team, expansion team with my wife at 31 years old, college summer baseball, then turned this into Banana Ball, then started adding teams. So it's just a 20 year plus process. So some people it's like they just bought a baseball team in there or something like this is 20 years to get here. Every year, just getting a little bit better, adding things that's better for the fan experience. So I don't think about what does it feel like, I don't feel like what are we gonna do next for our fans? How do we create a better experience?

James (2:09)

But you didn't just start out as a GM, right? I mean, to build this thing, you and your wife went a million dollars in debt to be able to build this thing. You guys sold the house and talked to us about what were those early sacrifices that you had to really make?

Jesse Cole (2:20)

It was brutal, it was brutal. You're 31 years old, my wife was 28

We just got married. We got the keys to this new team in Savannah, Georgia, professional baseball for 90 years there. We're coming in as this college summer baseball team. Everyone expected us to fail. And we did, we were marketing like everyone else, doing social media like everyone else. We were scared, we were trying to fit in and we failed. We sold two tickets in our first few months. And yeah, on January 15th, 2016, got the phone call, we were out of money. Had to, couldn't make payroll. So we had to sell our house, empty our savings account, sleeping on an air bed and we were down to nothing. And I remember just like, what are we going to do? Well, we got to get to that first game. And I think a lot of people, you know, you talk and you talk about what you're going to do. You got to keep showing up and get to that first game. We knew if we could get to that first game and show people what we could do, we could create fans. And so that first game, we went all out. We had the Banana Nana senior citizen dance team. We had, you know, a Banana Baby. We had players dancing. We had, we broke down the barriers between players and fans. We had every ticket all inclusive. So all your burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, soda water was included with the ticket, everything. And fans felt something different and was getting to that day. That changed everything.