The Savannah Bananas are getting their own championship game on Disney+.
Disney announced Tuesday during its upfront presentation that the Banana Bowl — the Banana Ball League’s season championship — will stream on Disney+ this October, bringing together all six teams in the league for what the mass media and entertainment conglomerate promises to be the biggest production the Bananas have put together yet.
The Bananas first appeared on ESPN platforms in 2022 and have since secured deals with Stadium, Bally Live, The CW, truTV, and Roku, in addition to their ESPN relationship. Last year, ESPN aired 12 Savannah Bananas games. This year, the two sides struck a 25-game exclusive package with every game streaming on Disney+ and the ESPN App, select matchups airing across ESPN networks and ABC, and a first-ever national showcase on ABC from Autzen Stadium in Oregon. Roku added five exclusive games on top of that, while truTV aired 19 games last summer, including the first-ever tour championship. Now, that championship has a permanent home at Disney+.
Tuesday’s Banana Bowl announcement was just one piece of a Disney-Bananas partnership that has been taking shape all year.
Disney has already hosted a Savannah Bananas Day at Disneyland Resort in California. Banana Ball is heading to Walt Disney World at the end of May for a game at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex. In July, the Bananas will also stop at ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut, in conjunction with a summer event at Dunkin’ Park in Hartford, Connecticut. And keeping with that corporate synergy, second baseman Jackson Olson was also announced Tuesday as a competitor on Season 35 of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, which about sums up where the Bananas stand as a cultural property right now.
The team, which started as a barnstorming exhibition act, has spent the last several years selling out NFL stadiums, college football venues, and MLB ballparks across the country while becoming one of the most recognizable brands in sports. That brand is now putting its championship on one of the world’s biggest streaming platforms.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.