How Much Do Savannah Bananas Players Make?

The headline number: an average above $100,000

On January 21, 2026, Banana Ball released its first annual Fans First Report, a public rundown of the 2025 season that Front Office Sports, Athlon Sports, and others covered the same week. Among figures like 2.2 million tickets sold, 1.97 million merchandise items, and 113 shows across six teams, the report disclosed that the average Banana Ball player salary is more than $100,000 per year, which works out to north of $8,300 a month before taxes.

The report also described how that number moves: it has risen every year with the organization's growth and, in the league's words, will continue to rise based on the number of fans served each season. Founder and commissioner Jesse Cole framed the disclosure as voluntary — a privately held company with no obligation to share, choosing to. It is, as far as we can find, the first time any Banana Ball pay figure has come from the league rather than from a reporter's estimate.

Three caveats before you repeat it at a party. It is an average, so it tells you nothing about the floor, the ceiling, or how wide the spread is. It is for "players," and the league has not said whether that pool includes the dancers, the Dad Bod Cheer Squad, the Man-Nanas, the broadcasters, or the rest of the cast. And it is self-reported; no outlet has independently audited it.

What was reported before the league said anything

Until 2026 the best sourcing came from Forbes. In a September 21, 2025 valuation piece that pegged the Bananas at roughly $500 million, Forbes reported that most players earn two, and sometimes three, times what minor leaguers typically make despite playing almost 100 fewer games, and that the organization aims to give players significant raises each year. The same story quoted shortstop Ryan Cox saying the team takes care of its players better than any minor-league club would, while acknowledging they are not on big-league contracts. A June 2025 Forbes feature also confirmed that player contracts include full health benefits.

Forbes put the cost of carrying each member of the traveling party at about $40,000 a year in hotels and travel on top of pay — the made-to-order-breakfast tier of road life, not the minor-league host-family tier.

How the pay is structured (as far as anyone knows)

Banana Ball has never published a standard contract, a pay scale, or a roster-by-roster payroll, so this section is an honest composite of what is reported.

Players versus the rest of the cast

A Banana Ball roster is split between the baseball players who take the field and the entertainers — dance crews, the pep band, the senior-citizen and dad-bod dance teams, the emcees — whose pay has never been reported at all. When you see "Savannah Bananas salary" in a headline, it is about the players. We have found no sourced figure for performers and will not invent one.

Seasonal versus year-round

Here the reporting disagrees. The Sporting News, summarizing the 2026 report, says players are paid year-round, unlike the seasonal structure of pro baseball. Athlon Sports, working from the same report, says the salaries are paid out in-season, typically March to September, with the rest of the year open for additional income. The report's own phrasing is an annual average, which is compatible with either reading. Until the league clarifies, the safe statement is: the average is an annual figure, the schedule is roughly 65 games, and contracts include full health benefits, per Forbes.

Six teams, one employer

All six 2026 clubs — Savannah Bananas, Party Animals, Firefighters, Texas Tailgaters, Indianapolis Clowns, and Loco Beach Coconuts — are owned and operated by Fans First Entertainment. There is no free agency and no competing bids; even the November 2025 player draft moved players between clubs that share one owner. That single-employer structure is the main reason salary data is so scarce: there is no second party with an incentive to leak it.

Former MLB players on 2026 rosters

Banana Ball has long booked retired big leaguers for one-off appearances — Roger Clemens pitched in March 2024, Johnny Damon played in July 2025, and Jake Peavy, Jeremy Guthrie, and Heath Bell have all suited up. The 2026 season changed the model: the Indianapolis Clowns used the first pick in the inaugural Banana Ball draft on Jackie Bradley Jr., the 11-year MLB veteran and 2018 World Series champion, who became the first former major leaguer to commit to the league full time. ESPN's report on the pick, like every other account, contained no contract terms. Whether a Gold Glove on the résumé buys a premium over the $100,000 average is simply unknown. You can follow his season, and every other player's, on our player stats page.

How it compares to minor-league pay

The comparison Banana Ball invites is with Minor League Baseball, where most of its players came from. Under the first MiLB collective bargaining agreement (ratified in 2023), Front Office Sports listed these 2025 minimum salaries:

Source for the MiLB rows: Front Office Sports, "How Much Do Minor League Baseball Players Make," June 2025. Forbes used a rounder figure, a Triple-A minimum of around $40,000 for a 150-game season. Either way the gap is large: a Banana Ball average near $100,000 is roughly three times the Triple-A floor and nearly four times Single-A. Minor leaguers do get free housing, two meals a day, and a per diem under the CBA, and veteran minor leaguers with six-plus years of service can earn considerably more than the minimums, so the comparison flatters Banana Ball most at the bottom of the ladder, which is exactly where most of its players were.

The other side of the ledger: a Banana Ball player is also an entertainer who signs autographs for hours, learns choreography, and is on camera constantly. It is a different job, paid differently, and the league's own report notes the roughly 65-game schedule against 100-plus more in the minors.

Why this is so hard to pin down

• Private company, single owner. Fans First Entertainment discloses what it chooses to. Forbes reported Cole has received offers valuing the organization at $1 billion and plans neither a sale nor outside investment, so there are no investors to report to.
• No collective bargaining. MiLB pay became public because a union negotiated it into a CBA. No such agreement exists in Banana Ball.
• One number, no distribution. An average above $100,000 could describe a flat roster or a few stars pulling up a modest base. The league has not said.
• Salary aggregators are noise. Glassdoor and Salary.com pages for "Savannah Bananas" mix front-office and gameday staff with self-reported entries and should not be read as player pay.
• The number is moving. The league says it rises annually with attendance; a 2026 average will be different from 2025's and the report will presumably update each winter.

So the defensible sentence is this: Savannah Bananas players earn, on average, more than $100,000 a year according to the league itself, with health benefits, which is two to three times typical minor-league pay; anything more specific than that has not been reported. When that changes we will update this page. In the meantime, the people being paid are on the team pages, and how they are performing is on player stats.