Banana Ball Part 2

A discussion on the hardest to get tickets in sports and the "easiest" way to get them.

This is part 2 of a multi-part post. You can easily access the other parts here:

• PART 1
• PART 3
• CONCLUSION

Last time, I introduced Banana Ball and spoke a little bit about its teams, and while watching them on YouTube is nice (they livestream pretty much all of their games), going to see them would be better (especially for the purposes of this blog).

However...

A Whole Lotto Tickets

Demand for tickets has been high since the team’s inception, and despite the expansion of the brand into four (and soon to be six) teams, said demand has not cooled one bit. For example, I saw something online that said that over 182,000 people entered the ticket lottery for just over 80,000 tickets at Chicago’s Rate Field last weekend (insert your own White Sox joke here). However, given that the 182,000 entrants likely represents far more people than that (i.e. friends and families)¹, and that the 80,000 tickets is likely lower due to presales (more on that in a sec), it’s more likely that almost a million people are competing for 40-50,000 seats.

While the method the Bananas have used to distribute tickets has changed a bit over the years, getting Banana Ball tickets, like it or not, is almost purely luck based. In addition, the Bananas are VERY anti-scalper (to the point where they developed their own ticketing platform), so there are a TON of measures they use to try and prevent ticket scalping (such as only sending tickets three days before events, requiring verification, etc.). Sadly, I have heard stories about the Bananas losing fans simply due to the fact that people get unlucky year after year thanks to how random getting tickets (seemingly) is and/or issues involving the secondary market.

To explain the lottery process, I’ll use the dates from the announcements for their current tour (2025). Some of this information is from secondhand sources (for reasons you’ll see soon), so bear with me if I get something wrong.

On October 4, 2024, the Bananas announced their dates for the 2025 Banana Ball World Tour². Immediately after the dates were announced, fans were invited to join a lottery list for tickets; signups for this list closed on November 1, 2024. There is something else called the “ticket interest” list (which is the list to sign up for after the ticket lottery closes), but it’s stated upfront that you won’t be able to get tickets for 2025.

Around two months before each individual game, every fan in the lottery finds out whether or not they’re going to be able to (have the chance to) purchase tickets. If you get drawn to get tickets, you are then asked to verify your account on their ticketing platform (as mentioned earlier, they made their own ticket platform to combat fees/scalpers), and then you are eventually given a date and specific time slot when you can get tickets - or the bad news that you will (almost certainly) not have a chance to get tickets (i.e. if you have a later time slot and/or are placed on “standby”).

I have heard that having season tickets for the team that normally plays at the stadium you want to go to can help you get in via a presale opportunity, but I have no clue if this is true (though I also heard that this practice is limited to MLB venues only). I do know that the Brockton Rox - who I had visited the day before my game - used this tactic to try and sell season tickets in 2023 (during their tumultuous Futures League days) when their stadium hosted a Banana Ball game (no clue how that went).

If you’re not a fan of having your opportunity to see Banana Ball be fully up to chance nor can stomach paying for season tickets, there is another way to bypass this lottery system (sorta): the K Club.

Going (K) Clubbin’

The K Club is the Bananas’ “superfan” group, which comes with a lot of perks, but the biggest perk is very easily the ability to buy tickets before the general public (i.e. the lotteries). However, the thing about the K Club is that it’s NOT easy to get into (apparently).

On the surface, the process seems decently simplistic. There’s a page on the Bananas’ website where you can join their “K Club Interest List”, and through most of the year, the Bananas accept signups for this list. At some point in September (I think), sign ups close - as indicated by this message³:

Said invitation was a request from the team for you to verify some of your account details on their ticketing website. Once you do that, you are then given a window during which you pay a membership fee (all of this being similar to buying regular tickets), and then once you do that, you’re in! Once you’re in the K Club, you don’t need to join the interest list for the following years; the only thing you need to do is pay the membership fee each year. You are also allowed to leave the K Club if you sense you won’t be buying Banana Ball tickets, but I’m not sure what that process is; I did find a page for a “Do Not Renew” form, but there was no form when I checked it (there’s also the fact that I don’t expect too many people not renewing for reasons I'll get into soon).

There is one catch to ALL of this, however: in order to be able to purchase K Club membership...you have to win a (secret) lottery. Note that this K Club lottery is NOT disclosed on their website (and seemingly isn’t even insinuated either), so be forewarned that signing up for the interest list does NOT guarantee you K Club access. I have heard that you only need to sign up once for the interest list, and then you’re in the K Club lottery each year until you win/get in, but have no idea how true this is (and trying to test it is going to take a literal year, so...).

Word on the street is that demand to get into the K Club is getting REAL high (which makes sense given its status as a ticket presale). The official K Club group on Facebook has just over 21,000 members and you NEED to be a verified K Club member to have access, so given that the K Club has only been around since 2023, that means that they’ve been adding ~7,000 members a year (and likely getting WAY more requests than that). In my opinion, getting in will probably become harder and harder each coming year as more people realize it’s the best way to get the best seats (especially at venues where that is extremely important). It’s also unlikely that many people will (willingly) leave the K Club in the near future unless one or more of the following happens:

• The price of membership gets exorbitant
• They eliminate the presale aspect (which would TANK signups/memberships)
• Interest in Banana Ball wanes

A lot of the information comes from various sources on the internet (much like the ticket lottery), but if you were wondering how I know so much about how to get into the K Club, that’s because...

...I signed up for the 2025 interest list and GOT IN ON MY FIRST TRY. Thus, I never had to sign up for any ticket lotteries to get into any games (for 2025); in fact, Reddit posts about not getting K Club access are how I learned that it was a lottery in the first place! My memories of the process are kinda fuzzy and I don’t remember if there were any indications of any lotteries in the messages I received as I’ve deleted the emails (I don’t like having a bunch of old emails in my inbox), but for now, I am treating this thing just like Green Bay Packers season tickets (‘cause that’s pretty much what this is).

As a final note, there MAY have been a small change to the process in 2025. A few months after originally publishing this post, I received information that indicated that the process became "application based" for 2026, as I was informed that I might be contacted if any applicants put me in as a reference (someone on Reddit asked me if I would be willing to be their reference FWIW, but I didn't respond because I ain't using that kind of "power" for internet strangers).

In Da (K) Club

With ALL OF THAT now in mind, I’d like to discuss life in the K Club.

First, let’s talk about the people. Members are separated into “classes” based on the year they joined; as of this being posted, there are classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025 (which I’m a member of), and they’re currently accepting signups for the Class of 2026 interest list(see below for update). As mentioned earlier, there’s a Facebook group which is restricted to K Club members only; I’m not actually sure if I’m in it or not, though I’m also not active on Facebook (so in essence I’m saying it’s possible that there are more than 21,000 K Club members).

Besides the most obvious perk of an exclusive window to buy (nearly) guaranteed tickets[^5], other perks include access to exclusive merch (which I haven’t gone for - yet), fun insider knowledge (such as being the first to know about a surprise game the Bananas played against Clemson in November 2024), and something that came up while I was preparing for this to be posted to the blog - the opportunity to opt in to buy tickets to the Banana Ball Tour Championship Series in October! I ended up not opting in for a few reasons, but given that ticket purchasing is timeslot based (from the email I got), I'm willing to bet timeslots are going to be based on what year you joined (like a lot of other things).

There are also some perks when you’re at a Banana Ball game itself, but I’ll get to those later (they vary from stadium to stadium, so I’ll focus on the ones I got) - just know that you receive a badge in the mail that you’re SUPPOSED to bring to the game.

As for how getting tickets works, it’s similar to the regular system: you are given a specific window during which you can buy tickets, but unlike the regular system, you can buy tickets for ANY GAME OF THE YEAR - not just a specific selected city. Your window for buying tickets is based on what year you joined; this is important for two reasons:

1. The K Club is more or less the only way to get into Grayson Stadium in Savannah (Banana Ball’s traditional home); however, I don’t recall being offered any of these games when I went to buy tickets (though I do recall getting an email at some point indicating I could get Grayson Stadium tickets).
2. There are a limited number of “Very Important Banana” tickets for each event, and they sell FAST. For the game I went to, the VIB tickets for the game I went to had already sold out for the ENTIRE GAME before I had a chance to get tickets (i.e. there were no VIB tickets for the general lottery). Thus, I can’t tell you what the VIB ticket gets you, though indications are it’s just meet and greets which I’m not sure I’m interested in (though that also includes field access).

You only have this one opportunity to buy your special K Club tickets for the WHOLE YEAR, and you’re only allowed six tickets per game, so you do need to bear that in mind (i.e. if you plan on bringing people). This all happens BEFORE the regular ticket lotteries start, so if you really want to see the Bananas, it’s a good way of scheduling parts of your entire year (especially if you can snag Savannah tickets). Also, much like Las Vegas, K Club tickets stay in K Club as they can’t be transferred to non-K Club members (even your own friends and family if you can’t make it for whatever reason as the K Club member HAS to be in attendance at the game). These measures were, from what I can tell, added in 2025 as the previous years seemingly had enough people using the K Club to, well...y’know (though apparently that doesn’t stop people from trying!). I have heard that if the Bananas find out that you’ve done this, you WILL get expelled from the K Club, so be VERY CAREFUL about reselling tickets should a need to come up.

For me, I was allowed to buy my tickets about a week or so before Thanksgiving 2024. Inasmuch as I would have liked to go to multiple events, I decided to hone in on one specific stop: Fenway Park.

UP NEXT:

I've done a bunch of build up, but now it's time to talk about the actual event itself.

PART 3