The “Greatest Show in Sports” has taken full effect of the sports and entertainment world with the explosion of the Savannah Bananas onto the scene.
Founded in 2016 by Jesse Cole as a summer collegiate team, the Bananas took America’s pastime to a new dimension known as “Banana Ball” in 2022, featuring anything from in-game dances from players and umpires, to epic scoring celebrations, to getting the fans involved in the game. Banana Ball brings an element of entertainment matched by none other.
If you need proof of the rapid ascension of the club, look no further than the three million people on the waiting list for tickets as the team sells out ballpark after ballpark.
A major component of the Bananas’ success has been the ingenious marketing and promotion performed by Cole to sell the product of Banana Ball and create brand awareness around the team.
Pair the team’s marketing gold with NASCAR and suddenly a dynamic duo is formed when arousing fan engagement.
Such was the case when upstart NASCAR Xfinity Series team Viking Motorsports partnered with NASCAR broadcast partner The CW and the Bananas to give the motorsports world the “Banana car,” with a full livery adoring Matt Dibenedetto’s No. 99 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in July.
The result? The collaboration produced some of the most traffic VMS has seen across social media and at-track autograph sessions.
“The craziest part to me was that I walked with Matt at Indy from the garage to the car for qualifying, and I’ve never seen — I’ve known Matt for a long time — I’ve never him sign more autographs in a 45-minute, 300-yard walk than ever before,” VMS general manager Jeremy Lange told Frontstretch.
What sparked the idea for the partnership was a united mission between Clear 28 Agency (a motorsports marketing agency representing several drivers and brands) and VMS to promote the debut of the Bananas’ games on The CW.
“Initial ideation came between Clear 28 and Viking Motorsports in trying to put together program that, with The CW being a great partner for the Xfinity Series that was having the debut broadcast for the Savannah Bananas, and they were playing in [Philadelphia] on Sunday the 27th (of July), and we were racing Indy on the 26th,” Lange said. “We reached out to The CW as a collective unit. I reached out to Matt Elder (Director of Brand Parternships at CW Sports) after a conversation with John and the team at Clear 28, and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’ He said, ‘I love the idea.’ Pushed up the flagpole to the marketing team, we got in touch with the marketing team, and off to the races, no pun intended.”
Off to the races and into the algorithms of social media it went. The new coalition brought unprecedented exposure, with two of the social media posts stemming from the partnership landing as the most engaged posts VMS had on its platforms.
“It was tremendous exposure for a team our size, and Clear 28, John [Lewensten, Chief Growth Office of Clear 28], and I are in lockstep trying to find innovative ways to get exposure for our race team and knowing that exposure and access,” Lange said. “Trying to gain exposure and trying to gain sponsorship and partnerships, and this program was a really good case study for us to show what a team our size can do for a brand like the Savannah Bananas and CW, and it was also a great way to partner up with the CW in the sense of them being the new home for the Xfinity Series.”
Just like the fluid, ramped-up speed of Bananas games compared to traditional baseball, the partnership to get the ball rolling for VMS was rather rapid. After receiving approval from the CW and Bananas to move forward, the team had roughly five weeks to get all of the parts and pieces in place. Exemplifying just how devoted the organization was to making this a successful project, one of the most complex details involved the fire suit.
“The biggest thing was the fire suit,” Lange recalled. “The fire suit is made in Italy through K1, so getting that designed — we went through a few revisions — I had a vision of wanting it to look like a baseball uniform, which is why you had the white pants, the blue socks, and the jersey. That was the vision we had, and we wanted to make that come to life, and then we matched the crew shirts to make them look like the Bananas uniforms.”
As mentioned, Lange has spent several years alongside DiBenedetto, working with him when he raced in the NASCAR Cup Series for Leavine Family Racing. The 34-year-old fan favorite is no stranger to putting himself out there, from wearing boxing gloves and gear at driver introductions to going all-in on Barstool Sports sponsorship. And with the Bananas activation, Lange expected nothing different from his driver.
“I’ve put Matt in some very comfortable situations, at LFR and here,” Lange said with a laugh. “And I’ll continue to do so because I have a driver in a sense that I know is willing to do whatever it takes for the partnership.”
As someone who has seen DiBenedetto transition through the highs of making it to the NASCAR Cup Series, the lows of searching for a job and now in a season of trying to savor the opportunity at hand, Lange believes it has expanded DiBenedetto’s freedom to have fun with things like this partnership.
“It’s funny because I texted Matt and said, ‘Hey man, I know it’s last minute, I know you’re flying out in the morning, but it’d be great if you and (Taylor, DiBenedetto’s wife) could do just a quick dance video,” Lange said. “He’s like, ‘Man, I’ve already finished it, posted it in five minutes.’ And that just shows you he’s not afraid to not to embarrass himself, but he’s not afraid to do something that puts himself in an uncomfortable position for the benefit of the partnership.”
The excitement surrounding the partnership carried over after DiBenedetto tallied a solid 11th-place result in the Banana car at Indianapolis. Both he and Lange were able to experience first-hand the adrenaline rush that Banana Ball brings by attending the team’s game in Philadelphia the next day, where DiBenedetto had the opportunity to throw out the first banana (a banana is used in place of a baseball).
Lange has been to the Super Bowl, World Series games and the Olympics, but none left him speechless and as welcomed as the Bananas did.
“They were beyond friendly,” Langley said. “They made sure Matt was comfortable doing the first banana throw-out. They made sure of all of it, right? They checked to make sure that, ‘Hey, how do you say the name of the race team? Hey, did you finish 11th? [Founded] last year, right?’ They made sure they knew all of the facts.”
While NASCAR is about as fast-paced as they come, the orchestration and flow of events impressed Lange.
“I don’t want to spill how they do things, but I saw their run of the show: it’s to the minute,” Lange said. “I’ve done a lot of shows in my career. I’ve never done one to the minute. They literally said, ‘Hey, can I get Matt on an interview in the Tailgaters dugout from 3.07 to 3.07.45. He’s got 45 seconds […] So, it was fascinating to see the behind-the-scenes, but at the same time, they were beyond welcoming the whole time.”
The experiment proved invaluable to the team’s ability to innovate collaborations and sell itself to other potential partners, proving it can execute under the brightest of spotlights. As a result, VMS received the most exposure it had experienced from both a broadcast perspective, as well as its online presence.
Moving forward, the success from the collaboration brings the goal of outsourcing VMS’ marketing ventures to groups such as Clear 28 into a clearer view, allowing the growing team to focus on the racing side, taking it one step at a time.
“By having partners like Clear 28 behind the scenes and along for the ride, I don’t worry about any partner coming on board because we are fully, I don’t want to say fully staffed, but we work with Clear 28 for a reason,” Lange said. “We feel like they can help us achieve our goals. We would not be able to pull this off without Clear 28.
“That was a strategic goal of our’s going into the season, we’re going to outsource our marketing and let someone oversee it for us so we can focus on racing, because at the end of the day, we’re a race team,” Lange said. “If you look at Viking Motorsports, we’re a race team, not a marketing agency, we’re not a sales agency, we’re a race team. And I think by having Clear 28 handle those things for us, it allows us and me to focus on the competitive side and the operations side, and allow the racing to take care of itself.”
Lange’s vision for VMS is clear: don’t be a “flash in the pan,” but rather, focus on incremental, methodical growth to ensure long-term sustainability while getting closer to the pinnacle with each passing season. And because of partnerships like the one with the Bananas, the team continues to hit home runs of its own as it grows in the Xfinity Series.
Since finishing 11th at Indianapolis, DiBenedetto has only posted one top-20 finish, another 11th-place result at St. Louis.
Entering his fifth year with Frontstretch, Luken Glover is the author ofย The Underdog House, shedding light on the motivation and performance of NASCAR's dark horse teams as they strive to fight to the top. Additionally, Glover reports for the site at various events, and he contributes in the video editing department.
A 2023 graduate of the University of the Cumberlands, Glover is a middle school math and PE teacher, as well as a basketball coach. He is passionate about serving in his church, playing/coaching a wide variety of sports, and researching motorsports history.