Jason Kelce Reveals He’s “Secretly Been Looking” Into Reviving Backyard Sports Franchise

Anyone growing up in the late ’90s and early ’00s loving video games and sports knows the Backyard Sports series. It’s no surprise then, that some of today’s NFL stars have a soft spot for Backyard Football and all of the other games in the long-running series. In a recent episode of New Heights, a podcast hosted by NFL players and brothers Jason and Travis Kelce, the duo waxed poetically about their memories of the franchise. It went even further than that, as Jason Kelce revealed that he’s “secretly been looking into” who holds the rights to the Backyard Sports franchise with an eventual plan to bring it back.

Jason Kelce Wants to Get Backyard Sports “Going Again”

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The news that Jason Kelce is considering bringing Backyard Sports out of retirement is exciting for fans of the series. However, it might not be as easy as you might assume. The original Backyard Sports games (along with several other popular edutainment games) were made by Humongous Entertainment. That studio closed its doors in 2005 and sold its assets to various parties. Over the last several years, many former Humongous games have been consistently ported to modern consoles, including franchises like Putt-Putt and Spy Fox. However, Backyard Sports has not enjoyed the same treatment.

Because the games are no longer readily available, it’s possible Kelce could work out a deal to bring them forward to a modern generation. After all, he and his brother are two of the more high-profile players in the NFL these days. Having their names behind the project would add more than enough cachet to get the ball rolling for the first time in nearly a decade. The issue is that the untangling of the web of who owns the Backyard Sports brand is a little complicated.

Who Owns Backyard Sports?

After shutting down in 2005, Humongous Games’ properties were sold by publisher Atari to Infogrames, and a new subsidiary was opened called Humongous Inc. A few years later, Infogrames purchased and merged with Atari. During the time between Humongous’ closure and the many changes within Atari, several other developers took a crack at modernizing Backyard Sports to mixed reception.

In 2013, The Evergreen Group purchased the Backyard Sports franchise from Atari during its bankruptcy proceedings. At the same time, the bulk of the Humongous catalog was sold to Tommo, who relaunched the original branding and released everything that wasn’t included in the Backyard Sports franchise. The Evergreen Group never released a single Backyard Sports game before selling the property to Day6 Sports Group.

In 2015, Day6 attempted to bring the franchise back with two different mobile games. However, neither performed well, and there has yet to be another Backyard Sports release since then. That said, it’s not clear if Day6 is the current owner, as Day6 was purchased by an unnamed European investment group in 2016. Further, the Day6 website no longer works, leading to a case where there’s almost no information available. 

To add even more confusion, in April 2019, Humongous Entertainment’s Twitter posted an image of the Junior Sports logo, leading many fans to assume the franchise was finally making a comeback. Unfortunately, nothing was announced, and the account hasn’t tweeted further hints since then.

As you can see, the Backyard Sports franchise has had a winding road over the last several years, and it’s not completely clear who someone would need to talk to about getting the rights. That said, the excitement is still out there for Pablo Sanchez and his friends, so it will be fun to see if the Kelce brothers can somehow make this happen.