📉 The Savannah Bananas Are (Purposely) Losing $200,000 per Game

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It’s a tale as old as time: something that was once new and niche becomes a victim of its own success, and seemingly overnight, becomes hated by virtue of its own popularity.

We’ve seen this lifecycle play out everywhere, from Timothy Chalemet to low-waisted jeans, but now the latest phenomenon on the chopping block is:

checks notes

The Savannah Bananas.

Don’t believe me? Just read the comments on this video.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: The Savannah Bananas Are (Purposely) Losing $200,000 per Game

📉 Biggest Loser: The Real Reason Behind the NFL’s Smelling Salts Ban

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How The NFL’s & NBA’s Most Unusual Owner Just Made $7 Billion

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🗞 The Big Story

The Savannah Bananas are losing over $200,000 per game (on purpose). Let’s break down this crazy business decision.

Background: The Bananas and their opponents are currently in the middle of a 107-game season that will span over 40 cities and has already included sell-outs in three football stadiums.

• Clemson’s Memorial Stadium: 81,000 fans

• Bank of America Stadium: 74,000 fans

• Raymond James Stadium: 65,000 fans

Plus, thanks to the team’s popularity and their low ticket prices, which start at just $35 each, they have a waitlist that’s now over 3.5 million people long.

So what’s the issue here?

Well, in his quest to create the ultimate fan experience, owner Jesse Cole has refused to charge fans any taxes, fees, or even shipping on tickets and merchandise since starting the team, and while this is great for the fans, someone still has to pay that extra cost, and it turns out, it’s not cheap.

Let’s use the Bananas' two recent sellout games in Baltimore as an example.

Covering Fans’ Taxes: Last weekend, the team sold out Camden Yards on back-to-back nights, welcoming over 45,000 fans to each game. This equates to:

• $35 ticket x 45,971 fans x 10% sales tax = $160,898 in tax paid on tickets

But that’s not even including merchandise:

• 22,985 purchases (~50% of fans in attendance) x $30 average purchase x 6% sales tax = $41,374 in taxes paid on merchandise

Missing Out on Profit: This means that, in total, the team spent an estimated $202,272.50 per game in Baltimore on taxes that they’re not even obligated to pay.

Across 107 games this season, that’s a total of $21.4 million in profit they’re missing out on. But according to owner Jesse Cole, that cost is more than worth it:

I honestly don’t know why this guy gets so much hate.

📉 Biggest Loser

The NFL just made one of the most confusing rule changes I’ve ever seen, but not for the reason you might think.

Smelling Salt Ban: By now, you’ve probably heard that the NFL has banned the use of smelling salts for the upcoming season, which has a lot of players upset:

Now, the truth is, players have been using these tiny packets for as long as football has been around.

In fact, dating all the way back to the 13th century, ammonia, the active ingredient in smelling salts, was used by doctors to help wake up patients who had fainted. However, today, ammonia is most commonly used in:

• Fertilizer

• Refrigerants

• Household cleaners

The Science: Still, it has remained popular with athletes who like to use it in smelling-salt form for a quick burst of alertness, especially after a big hit, even though the scientific consensus dating back to the 1990s agreed that there is no evidence that smelling salts increase alertness, energy or performace.

A point reiterated by the FDA over a year ago when they issued a consumer safety warning advising against the purchase of smelling salts that specifically market those benefits.

So if we’ve known that smelling salts don’t work for over 30 years, then why is the NFL just banning them now?

The Ban: I actually don’t think it has anything to do with the lack of science behind smelling salts like the league claims. If the NFL were banning them for that reason, they would have done it before the 2024 season when the FDA issued its official warning.

Instead, I think we can trace this decision back to Week 5 of last season, when Josh Allen appeared to get knocked out, only to return one play later after being caught by broadcast cameras on the sideline taking a hit of smelling salts.

Bad Optics: Now, players like Terry Bradshaw have openly stated for years that players do this all the time when they get their bell rung, but for a league that’s so outwardly concerned about player safety, this was a really bad look.

Because not only do smelling salts give players a false sense of alertness after a potential concussion, but scientists now think that using smelling salts can actually mask concussion symptoms, making them harder to accurately identify.

So, in my opinion, the NFL likely tried to quietly ban smelling salts to avoid similar bad optics in the future, and they might have gotten away with it if not for George Kittle.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

This is the most unusual owner in professional sports, but she’s about to pull off one of the savviest moves I’ve ever seen.

Background: Meet Jody Allen, the sole owner of the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks. On the surface, Jody seems like any other owner. She sits courtside at about 30 Blazers games per year and was the person responsible for firing Pete Carroll in 2024. But as you dig deeper into her plan for both teams, you start to realize that there’s never been another owner in professional sports like her.

That’s because Jody only assumed control of the Blazers and the Seahawks after her brother and co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, died in 2018, and since then, she’s been tasked with selling off his entire estate, which is estimated to be worth around $20 billion, and donating “an overwhelming percentage” to charity.

And this includes selling both teams.

Playing the Waiting Game: However, despite her late brother’s wishes, up until this year, Jody has reiterated time and time again that neither team is for sale. But that all changed when the Celtics sold in March at a valuation of $6.1 billion, and Jody issued a statement letting the world know that the Blazers were officially on the market.

Now, it’s unclear when Jody is required to sell both teams according to her brother’s will, but at the time of his death in 2018, the sale of both teams would have generated between $3.5 billion and $4 billion.

However, since then, Jody has undoubtedly turned down countless offers to buy each franchise, including a $2 billion bid from Phil Knight to buy the Blazers in 2022.

But after the recent sale of the Celtics, along with a new multi-billion NBA media rights deal and expansion distributions on the horizon, Jody decided that now was the right time to sell.

And it looks like she timed the market perfectly.

Cashing In: Because today, the Blazers alone have a valuation close to $4 billion, and many industry experts believe that once they’re sold, the Seahawks, who are valued at $7 billion, could be next.

Meaning, just by waiting for the right time, Jody Allen nearly tripled the value of her brother’s sports portfolio.

⏱️ In Other News

• ESPN is coming, ESPN is coming!

• WTF is going on with the WNBA in Boston?

• Is this the first time these words have ever been written in a sentence?

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👋🏻 Happy Friday! I’m curious where this audience lands on the Savannah Bananas: