The best business model in the world is to stop doing what your customers hate. It sounds harsh, but that's where everything started for us with the Savannah Bananas.
I remember vividly the day I was watching a baseball game and was bored out of my mind. I hated how long and slow the game had become and I knew there was a better way.
I then remember buying concert tickets and paying an arm and a leg, not just for the ticket, but for the ticket fees, convenient fees and taxes. I hated that a $50 ticket was over $70 with all the fees.
We started the Bananas with the idea that we would make baseball fun, fast and exciting and eliminate all the fees, while making the experience all-inclusive with all your hot dogs, burgers, chicken sandwiches, popcorn, water, soda and dessert for one low price.
Then we kept going eliminating the friction for our fans by taking down all the advertising at our stadium in Savannah, as we believe no one comes to a game to be advertised to or sold to.
Then we started Banana Ball and eliminated hitters stepping out of the box, walks, mound visits, and many of the other boring parts of the game.
We kept doing friction audits on our fan experience every step of the way. When you believe in being fans first, every single thing you do has to be fans first.
But we know we still have a long way to go. We had open seating for years, but as the excitement for our games grew, we knew we had to make a change to reserved seating...now all of our tour games are reserved seating to make it easier and safer for our fans.
Now today, ticket scalpers are taking advantage of our demand and selling our tickets for outrageous prices. We are going to work hard to eliminate this problem as well, and it may take years, but we are going to keep fighting for our fans.
We believe in long term fans over short term profits and will leave millions of dollars on the table to do so. It's never ending journey, but we've learned it's worth it 1,000% of the time.