Banana Ball will take over Roku City before the Fourth of July.
Roku will acquire the live streaming rights to Savannah Bananas over the weekend, and to increase viewership for the event, it’s bringing Banana Ball to Roku City… debuting a new interactive feature in the process.
“last year [when Roku had its first package of games] It’s been an experiment, and everything we do, from starting the tour with a one-city world tour, going to just one city, to doing major league stadiums, to doing soccer stadiums, to doing a cruise, we’re constantly experimenting and constantly testing things, and that’s what’s really great about Roku. “They had the same mentality,” Cole says in an interview. Hollywood Reporter. “We did a game last year, a show last year, and the viewership and response was amazing. We heard as much from our fans as any partner we’ve come up with, and then, we were like, ‘Okay, how can we expand on this?’
“I think they’re challenging the traditional norms of what sports can be, and when we’re trying to build engaging user experiences, I think our partnership with Savannah Bananas provides and creates a lot of ripe opportunities to do that this year,” says Joe Franzetta, head of sports at Roku Media. “What’s unique about Roku and our platform and our ability to integrate content into the platform experience, and Roku City is a one-of-a-kind destination, a really fun and exciting user experience, makes taking this next step with Bananas all the sense in the world.”
Roku is recreating historic Grayson Stadium in Savannah, Georgia, home of the Bananas, and users who click on the stadium in Roku’s city will see a special message from Bananas founder Jesse Cole, before being directed to the Banana Ball Zone for clips, highlights and game replays. Although Roku City has had billboard ads in Roku City for a long time, and occasionally adds custom buildings or vehicles, Stadium adds a new interactive element to the screensaver.
“We’ve built Grayson Stadium in Roku City, and this will be the entry point into an interactive experience, and this interactive experience will start with a greeting from Jesse, welcoming him to Bananas in Roku City, and that there’s a game on Saturday, be sure to tune in,” Franzetta says. “Then we drop people off at a destination dedicated to Bananas, and there’s all kinds of additional content there, so there’s clips and highlights, there’s replays of previous games, there’s interesting content that Bananas seems to be able to create uniquely, and then we also form a path to other games of theirs, games they have with other partners.”
Cole has long strived to make Savannah Bananas and Banana ball games as widely available as possible, including ensuring that each game is available for free on YouTube. Bananas also has TV deals with TNT Sports, The CW and Disney, which has exclusive rights to the Banana Ball playoffs (which will also be available for free on YouTube).
“In sports, you have to dig to see where the game is, and it’s on so many platforms, usually behind a paywall,” Cole laments. Our goal is to keep our shows free, which is difficult. I mean, we’re investing over $13 million into doing the streaming ourselves, and we’re doing it all ourselves, and we’re sharing it on YouTube for free, on Roku, and other opportunities for people to watch.
Roku, of course, is a streaming portal, and while it has its own slate of Bananas games, it also aims to direct visitors to YouTube, Disney+, or other services where the games may be available.
The Fourth of July celebration, along with the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, was too good to ignore.
“There’s nothing more Americana in my mind than Savannah Bananas and what they’ve built, the fan experience they’ve built, and the family orientation, which I think is really important on the Fourth of July as we celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary,” Franzetta says. “We’re coming straight from Iowa City, Iowa, and we’re in the middle of the country. I think that really plays into our ability to elevate and highlight the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration, and we thought there was no better way for us to do that than to really focus on the 4th of July and the savannah bananas.”
“When you think of the Fourth of July, you think of baseball, and now Banana Ball, so it wasn’t an easy thing for us,” Cole adds.
