NORFOLK, Va. — Jennifer Patton thought since her best friend lives in Yorktown, she should try to get tickets through the Savannah Bananas ticket lottery for the upcoming games at Norfolk's Harbor Park.
When her number wasn't selected, she soon contacted a person on Facebook she saw allegedly selling away their tickets, but almost immediately saw the red flags.
"She insisted she was not a scammer, and that's usually the first clue she is a scammer," Patton told 13News Now.
After asking the seller for the email used - to confirm with the team that the person in question legitimately had tickets - she says they became defiant and realized they were probably trying to scam her out of money.
The Savannah Bananas, a once collegiate summer baseball team based in Georgia, have amassed a massive popularity after bringing their "Banana Ball" show to baseball stadiums across the country.
Currently, demand for tickets surpasses the supply for each of their stops, based on a lottery system where tickets are sold for $35.
As more and more people become fans of the growing phenomenon, more and more people are also going to social media to raise awareness about scammers trying to trick people out of money for possible tickets.
13News Now talked to Savannah Bananas President Jared Orton about the legitimacy of these scams, and whether there is anything consumers need to know ahead of the August 16-18 games in Norfolk's Harbor Park.
Q: When did the Savannah Bananas start noticing internet scams linked to ticket sales?
A: I think the origins of this probably go back to 2022. I remember when we did our seven city world tour, we created basically event pages on social media that said like “Bananas coming to Daytona Beach, Bananas coming to West Palm Beach and Montgomery and so on and so forth. And all of a sudden we would post and it would be littered with comments of ‘I'm interested in this game’ and all of a sudden it would turn into ‘I've already got tickets but I'm selling them, please message me if interested. We’re like, ‘What in the world?’” Automatic robots on everything, and we ended up like shutting the pages down. We're like, this is bizarre. Like how is this all happening? And then fast forward to 2023 we started seeing these groups pop up amongst social media channels and pages and you know, “Official resale group of Savannah Bananas tickets” and “Official trade group of Savannas tickets.”
This October of 2023 for the 2024 season, we had sold zero tickets the night we announced our schedule. But the very next day, StubHub and Vivid Seats, Ticketmaster all had tickets available for sale.
This is the disgusting underbelly of speculative tickets, fake accounts. People just trying to take advantage of something awesome happening and being under the disguise of, ‘Ah, we have tickets. Please give me money. I will take care of you.’”
What do Bananas ticket scams look like today? Do you notice this when you guy to new markets?
I would say the biggest place that people have absolutely got to. I would say avoid at all costs is doing transactions over the internet with strangers and just sending real money based off of a screenshot or a message you've received or a just a posting like that. Just do not do that. Those are the horror stories we receive almost on a regular basis that hey, I saw someone post a message on Facebook or Instagram, whatever saying, claiming that they had tickets and they sent me a screenshot of a message and told me to send them the money in advance and they would just email me the tickets and almost every time that never actually works. And we try to help people through that. Anyone out there claiming that they have Savannah Bananas tickets and they're gonna transfer them to you, and you don't know these people intimately or physically or personally, you've got to stay away from those folks. If anyone's claiming that they, you know, these other sites have official tickets we don't partner with any of them. The only way to get legitimate official tickets from the Bananas for Banana Ball games is by joining our lottery list which opened up in October and closed in December. And you will receive direct information from us about your opportunity to purchase tickets and that window has long closed. We are not selling any more tickets, no one has any more tickets. It is truly like buyer beware if you can't see this person know this person, you know, go to church with them, work with them, something like that, don't send money to people like that. We don't facilitate the transactions.
If someone did want to legitimately pass off and buy tickets not through a third party avenue, is there anything you can do that helps secure the transaction?
We’re not in the exchange of the money. So there are legitimate ways but the money being transferred we can't control whether or not that transaction happens and if that person legitimately provides those tickets to you. Doing it in a extremely secure way, some of these sites do allow that secure ways and there are refunds. We’re also seeing though, many of these legitimate sites, they promise 100% basically buyer guarantee, you know, safety guarantee. If the tickets don't arrive, you'll get a full refund. The issue is when that happens, these fans have already purchased hotel rooms and they traveled to the city and they've taken off work and they've probably gotten a babysitter and like all these things and then two hours before the game, they get a notification that says, ‘Oh we're so sorry, we could not fulfill your order. But we gave your money back.’ And they're like, ‘But I'm here? I'm all ready to go. What do I do now?’ This is a systemic problem of the resale of high intensity events.”
Because people are just getting bamboozled by a speculative market of people just being able to take a screenshot on their phone and say, “All right internet, I have tickets and I will now collect the money.