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The Savannah Bananas, once a minor league baseball team, have transformed into a quirky, family-friendly traveling exhibition team known for their unique approach to the game. With that has come unprecedented growth, and this evolution has brought its share of challenges on the business side as the team navigates a bold new path in sports entertainment.
For Dr. Tim Naddy, vice president of finance for the Bananas, preparing the team for this growth has meant implementing what he dubs a “diamond and dugout” approach to finance, leveraging proprietary data systems, seeking mentorship to develop a strategic vision and overcoming the challenges of a complex ERP transition.
As the Bananas kick off the 2025 season, Naddy says his finance team is prepared to take a swing at another record-breaking year, with the tour expanding from minor league ballparks to selling out professional baseball and football stadiums across the U.S.
TIM NADDY: One of the biggest things I strive for is making sure my finance team doesn’t have traditional roles. Our team is cross-trained in what I call the diamond and dugout areas of our business. Diamond is baseball, and dugout is everything else, like game operations and food and beverage. Our merchandise is separate from that because I believe it’s important to ensure merchandise isn’t supplementing operations.
The entire company can run off ticket revenues, so when merchandise is boxed off by itself from our perspective in finance, we can analyze the core components of our business independently.
We’ve added multiple teams to our league: Bananas, Party Animals, Texas Tailgaters and Firefighters. We’ve been able to do this because our data shows that diamond has a lot of potential right now. As we grow there, the dugout business will follow suit. Everything is becoming more voluminous, so the challenge is to continue managing that margin so we never have to dip into merchandise to supplement elsewhere in the business.
I also got myself a mentor, Rob Gerbe, CFO of the United Football League. From a financial perspective, their model is where we’re looking to go. We both run small finance teams but have similar operations. His finance team is already there in terms of large venue control, data analysis and scheduling, which has helped me develop a vision for our finance function long term.
As we grow the Bananas Baseball League, some with regional namesakes, the scaling challenges can come fast. Things like withholding taxes in different states, operating multiple venues, lease agreements and utilities are all challenges our team needs to take on. He and I have talked a lot about creating a centrally located operation, like ours in Savannah, so we don’t have to geographically scale our operations when we add new teams.
How are you able to ensure data accessibility and accuracy among all of these compartmentalized moving pieces?
We have proprietary software that helps us with this. Our ticket system, Fans First Tickets, is essentially a reportable segment and a separate company. We don’t charge any fees back and forth between the ticket company and our organization, but this allows us to seamlessly track our software costs by keeping them separate.
On the retail side, our tech stack wouldn’t surprise many. We recently combined ShipBob with Shopify, which has greatly improved our inventory management and fulfillment of online orders. One of our past challenges was correctly filling online orders, but technology has helped address that. Now, our biggest challenge is where to store our inventory, and we’re looking into warehouse space throughout the country to address this.
Logistically, we continue to outsource to experts. The data there is pretty straightforward — did we load and unload on time and efficiently? We use Clark Transfer, and they’re seasoned professionals who excel at what they do. Early on, we rented Penske trucks and tried to do it ourselves, but having a logistical partner who’s an expert at their craft has alleviated pressure on game day.
How about in the finance function specifically, especially when forecasting costs for large events?
This is interesting because of the differences in operational scale and crowd size. In Savannah, for home games, it’s our smallest crowd by far — Grayson Stadium holds 5,000 seats, and we do offerings like all-you-can-eat. The data we gather there, though valuable, comes with different purchasing and consumer behavior patterns compared to a large venue.
After last year’s stadium tour, we noticed that while crowd size influences consumer behavior and purchasing patterns, those patterns are fairly consistent game after game. So going into Tampa, where we had 65,000 fans attend, we were prepared. We improved our efficiency for merchandise replenishment and managed lines of people faster. We did encounter battery life issues with our POS systems, so that’s something we’ll prepare for when we go to Clemson University next month.
I want to keep my team small as we grow, like Rob has done. Data is a huge part of that. As long as we continue to have great visibility into the core components of our business and operate on one source of truth, I believe finance can not only keep up but continue to be a pivotal part of our league’s growth.
You recently went through an ERP change. What advice would you give to peers going through this change?
We needed a robust ERP, so we moved from QuickBooks to NetSuite last year. Any finance person will tell you this isn’t an easy process. One thing we found is that everything we needed from NetSuite required another add-on or partnership. Fortunately, we have a technical team who can code and build bridges between systems, but without that, you’d need a NetSuite consultant or implementation expert.
One of the biggest surprises was a metric they call transaction volume. We blew through it within three days of turning on the system, even though we were told it would never happen. The threshold was 200,000 transactions per month on average over a six-month period. What we didn’t know was that a single purchase can generate multiple transactions — like a hat sale creating a sales transaction, an inventory adjustment and a revenue record. Five items bought online can equal 15 transactions in NetSuite.
We’ve since taken our systems off NetSuite and only use it for basic accounting functions. We just load transactions into it on a monthly basis. Our proprietary system and tech stack provide the data visibility we need.
What advice would you give a CFO who has been tasked with being a better communicator?
I’ve been teaching accounting throughout my career, and being an adjunct professor is one of the most valuable things anyone can do to improve communication skills. Finance leaders need to be storytellers, and if they climb the career ladder without that skill, they’ll face challenges. Teaching has helped me develop interpersonal communication skills, learn how to self-deprecate to set the tone, play down accolades and be approachable.
Leaders can come off as untouchable, especially in finance, even if they don’t realize it. I always say, 25 years ago, I was a babe in the woods just like my students are now, and I’ve faced nearly every struggle they’re experiencing. I recommend that CFOs find a city or group of colleges that works for them and reach out to teach a course. It’s not too much of a time commitment, and it truly is what you make of it. Plus, who knows, maybe you’ll get an invite to a party on a student’s yacht one day.
