There is a man walking around in a yellow tuxedo who understands Walt Disney better than the people actually running The Walt Disney Company right now, and that should stop every Disney fan dead in their tracks.
His name is Jesse Cole, and if you have not heard of him yet, you are missing one of the most exciting stories in American entertainment. Jesse Cole is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and the creator of Savannah Bananas baseball, home of the now legendary Banana Ball. Imagine the Harlem Globetrotters decided to take over a baseball diamond, threw in TikTok dances, and played the whole game like they were just goofing off with their best friends, except the competition is completely real. The games are faster, the rules are reimagined to keep the energy electric, fans can participate in plays, and the whole experience is built from the ground up around one simple but radical idea: the fans come first. Every single decision flows from that premise, and that is exactly what made Walt Disney one of the greatest visionaries in the history of entertainment.
Walt did not build Disneyland because he wanted to impress shareholders. He built it because he believed families deserved a place where parents and children could experience joy together. He was laughed at, told it was impossible, told no one would come, and he did it anyway because the guest experience was never negotiable to him. Jesse Cole operates from that exact same soul. He has turned down television deals that would have made him significantly wealthier because putting games behind a paywall betrays the fans who made him. Instead, games stream free on YouTube. Tickets through the team run between $35 and $60, so that real families with real budgets can actually walk through the gate. Walt wanted Disneyland to be accessible. Jesse wants Banana Ball to be accessible. That is not a coincidence, that is a philosophy.
And here is where it gets really important. Jesse Cole has been very open about why he has kept outside investors at arm’s length despite enormous pressure to take their money. He understands something that Disney seems to have forgotten, which is that the moment outside money comes in, it comes with strings attached. You no longer answer to your fans. You answer to the people who wrote the check. The fans stop being the priority, and the return on investment becomes the only conversation that matters. Jesse has watched that trap spring on countless other entertainment businesses, and he has refused to walk into it, even when the money being offered was extraordinary.
That is not just smart business. That is integrity. That is Walt.
Now consider what happened last year when Jesse’s team made a catastrophic email mistake. An offer meant for 4,000 fans accidentally went out to 44,000 people, inviting them to claim tickets with a time slot attached. The financial damage from honoring that mistake ran to roughly $6 million dollars. Jesse Cole did not lawyer up. He did not quietly bury it. He honored every single claim and gave those fans up to five free tickets to any game they wanted. Over 100,000 tickets went out the door at no cost. Then, when his team noticed that some of those free tickets were going unused, they bought them back. They bought back tickets they had already given away for free so that fans who genuinely wanted to attend could have them instead.
Read that again. They bought back tickets they had already given away for free.
I love Disney with everything I have, and that is exactly why I have to say it plainly: Disney would never do this. Not today. They might put the word “magic” in every press release and talk about the guest experience in every earnings call, but Jesse Cole just showed the entire entertainment industry what it actually looks like to mean it. This was not a marketing campaign. This was not a carefully worded apology from a PR team. This was a company eating a $6 million mistake with a smile because the fans were worth it.
That is the Walt Disney ethos. That is the thing that built this company into the most beloved entertainment brand on earth, and right now, a man in a yellow tuxedo in Savannah, Georgia, is living it more authentically than the people on the top floor of Disney offices in Burbank.
New Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro has a real opportunity in front of him. If he wants his tenure to mean something, if he wants to be the person who brought Disney back to itself, then he needs to be willing to stand up in whatever room he is in and say clearly that if this company is not guest-focused and fan-focused above everything else, then it is not Disney anymore. The shareholders matter. The board matters. The business has to work. But if the fan is not the north star, then you have already lost the thing that makes any of it worth protecting.
Jesse Cole already knows this. Walt Disney knew this. The question is whether Disney does anymore.
Photo Credit: Jesse Cole’s Instagram (@yellowtuxjesse)
