• Jackson Olson, second baseman for the Savannah Bananas, has been cast on Dancing With the Stars Season 35.
• The announcement was made during Disney’s Upfront presentation on Tuesday.
• Olson joins previously announced contestants Maura Higgins and Ciara Miller as the third celebrity revealed.
• Fans suspected the casting after DWTS judge Derek Hough tossed Olson a mini Mirrorball at a Bananas game in March.
• His casting is part of a larger Disney-Savannah Bananas partnership that includes the Banana Bowl streaming live on Disney+ this October.

Jackson Olson is trading the baseball diamond for the ballroom. The Savannah Bananas second baseman and social media star has been officially cast on Dancing With the Stars Season 35, Disney announced Tuesday during its Upfront presentation — and honestly, fans had already figured it out.

Olson becomes the third celebrity confirmed for the upcoming season, joining The Traitors and Love Island breakout Maura Higgins and Summer House fan favorite Ciara Miller. The full cast of celebrities and their professional dance partners will be revealed on September 2, exclusively on Good Morning America.

The Clues Were There All Along

In the weeks before the announcement, eagle-eyed fans were already connecting the dots. Olson posted a TikTok of himself dancing on the baseball field, with text over the video reading, “Jackson when can you share the secret you’ve been keeping from us?” He captioned it simply: “You’ll find out soon! 😅 #secret #baseball.” Sharp-eyed viewers immediately spotted a disco ball tucked on the fence behind him. “Yall it’s a mirrorball!!” one commenter wrote. Another added, “Guess I’m going to watch DWTS now 😏.”

The speculation went even deeper than that. Back in March, DWTS judge Derek Hough performed alongside Olson at a Savannah Bananas game — and in a video of the performance shared to Instagram, Hough tossed Olson a mini Mirrorball. The comment section basically solved the mystery on the spot: “OMG…Jackson is about to be on DWTS.”

From the Diamondbacks to the Bananas to the Ballroom

Olson’s road to this moment has been anything but a straight line. He turned down an offer from the Arizona Diamondbacks to finish his college degree, then transferred from the University of Hartford to Stetson University after the MLB draft was shortened during the pandemic. When his college career ended, he thought that was it for baseball.

“I thought I was done with baseball after my career at Stetson University,” Olson told People in 2023. “Mentally, I kind of fell out of love with the game. And the Bananas brought that back.”

He rebuilt his relationship with the sport through content creation — sharing baseball insights alongside stories about food, family, and relationships — and built a following of more than 2 million on TikTok in the process. That online presence eventually caught the attention of Savannah Bananas owner Jesse Cole, and Olson earned a spot on the roster of the Georgia-based team known for turning every game into a full-on entertainment spectacle. Think choreographed dances to Taylor Swift and Mariah Carey, comedy sketches, and Broadway-level showmanship from first pitch to final out. His teammate Derek Klena, of Broadway fame, is right there alongside him.

In other words: this is not a man who has never danced in front of a crowd.

A Big Disney Moment — On and Off the Field

Olson’s DWTS casting is just one piece of a much bigger announcement. Disney revealed an expanded partnership with the Savannah Bananas at the same Upfront event, making Disney+ the exclusive U.S. home of the Banana Bowl — the league’s championship game — streaming live this October. ESPN, Disney+, and the Bananas have also launched a 25-game exclusive package, with every game streaming on the ESPN App and Disney+, and select matchups airing across ESPN networks and ABC.

For the show itself, the momentum couldn’t be better. Season 34 — hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro and Julianne Hough, with judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli, and Derek Hough — finished as the No. 1 entertainment series among adults 18-49 for the second year running. Ratings in the key broadcast demo grew nearly 80% year-over-year. The finale alone pulled in 72 million votes, with nearly half a billion cast across the entire season. Robert Irwin and Witney Carson took home the Mirrorball that year.

ABC SVP of content strategy Ari Goldman made clear the network plans to keep pushing on the social media front that helped drive that growth. “The team has innovated immensely in the social media space, both from a casting perspective and a lot of the social and marketing tactics involved with the show,” Goldman told TheWrap. “I think you’re going to see the same type of approach this season.”

Casting someone with 2 million TikTok followers who already dances at work every day? That tracks.

Life Off the Field Is Pretty Good Too

Olson has been making headlines beyond baseball lately, thanks to his relationship with Maggie Sajak — yes, daughter of Wheel of Fortune legend Pat Sajak. The two went public in April, and Olson has been refreshingly open about making it work across the miles.

“It’s really cool because we’re obviously living very different lives right now on the opposite side of the country, but we’re able to come together and just have an awesome relationship,” he told Us Weekly earlier this month. “I feel like in any relationship, you’re trying to figure out how to see each other as frequently as possible, which is never something that I thought in my past I was going to want to do… but now I really do.”

The full Season 35 cast drops September 2 on Good Morning America. Until then, that mini Mirrorball Derek Hough tossed him back in March is looking more and more like a prophecy.

The post Savannah Bananas’ Jackson Olson Joins DWTS Season 35 appeared first on Cream.

• Jackson Olson, internet personality and Savannah Bananas baseball player, is the third confirmed cast member for DWTS Season 35.
• Maura Higgins (The Traitors/Love Island) and Ciara Miller (Summer House) were the first two stars announced.
• The full cast and pro partners will be revealed on Good Morning America on September 2, 2026.
• DWTS Season 35 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on ABC — and no, the results show is not coming back.
• A companion spinoff, Dancing With the Stars: The Next Pro, is also coming this summer.

Dancing With the Stars is slowly but surely building out its Season 35 ballroom, and the third confirmed cast member is someone you might already be following online. Jackson Olson — internet personality and baseball player for the viral Savannah Bananas — was revealed at the Disney Upfronts on May 12, joining a cast that’s shaping up to be one of the more reality-and-internet-savvy lineups in the show’s history.

Olson joins Ciara Miller of Summer House and Maura Higgins — the Irish fan favorite who became a breakout star on both Love Island and The Traitors — as the first three celebrities confirmed for the fall season. All three had massive moments in 2025, which makes their casting feel less like a coincidence and more like executive producer and casting head Deena Katz knew exactly what she was doing.

Higgins, for her part, is fully ready to put in the work. “I know it’s going to be so, so hard, but because I really want to do it I’m going to put my all into it,” she said. “I’m just so excited. I just want to get going now, to be honest.”

@thesun

Maura Higgins’ strong reaction to discovering she was being betrayed on The Traitors US has been branded as ‘iconic’. Tap the link above for the full story. #traitors #traitorsus #maurahiggins #thetraitors #thetraitorsus

♬ original sound – The Sun

The Full Cast Reveal Is Coming September 2

The rest of the celebrity lineup — along with which professional dancers will be paired with whom — won’t be officially unveiled until the September 2 episode of Good Morning America. In the meantime, Just Jared reports that several additional celebrities are rumored for the season, a few have confirmed they were approached, and at least one has publicly shot down the reports linking her to the show. The rumor mill, as always, is very much running.

What’s new this cycle is the addition of a companion series: Dancing With the Stars: The Next Pro, set to air this summer, where a group of dancers will compete for a spot on the pro cast. Showrunner Conrad Green told The Hollywood Reporter that the winner has already been determined — “secretly in the bank,” as he put it — and explained what the spinoff revealed about what it actually takes to be a DWTS pro.

“Just being a good ballroom or Latin dancer is the basics,” Green said. “But you have to be able to do group dancing, choreograph, manage difficult people, manage time pressure, format a dance and choreograph for a one-minute routine that’s got moments that might get picked up on social media that might make your couple pop.”

Tuesday Nights, No Results Show, Same Three Judges

ABC confirmed at the Upfronts that DWTS Season 35 will air Tuesdays from 8/7c to 10/9c. No specific premiere date has been set, but the show typically returns in mid-September, so a September 2026 kickoff is the safe bet.

One thing that won’t be returning: the results show. During Season 34, Tom Bergeron came back as a guest judge and publicly urged ABC to bring back the two-night format, citing record ratings and arguing that the old overnight voting window gave the show a different energy. ABC isn’t biting — with only one night of DWTS on the schedule, the results show stays gone.

The judging panel, at least, remains unchanged. Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough, and Bruno Tonioli are all back. Inaba and Tonioli have been judging since the very first season in 2005; Hough joined later during Len Goodman‘s tenure, and has remained a fixture since Goodman’s passing in April 2023. Guest judges will likely pop up throughout the season as well, though those names are typically kept under wraps until just before their episodes air.

For now, all eyes are on September 2 — and whatever names Deena Katz has been quietly assembling for what is, after all, a landmark 35th season.

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