The Backyard Sports video game series was a staple of endless American upbringings. While the last Backyard Sports title was released in 2015, Jason Kelce is keen on bringing the iconic series back.
During the most recent episode of the Kelce brothers' "New Heights" podcast, Jason confided to his brother Travis (and to all those listening) that he has been looking into who owns the Backyard Sports franchise rights.
If anyone knows who has the rights to the backyard sports franchise please hit us up ?pic.twitter.com/hwZ3WxNt74
— New Heights (@newheightshow) January 31, 2024
"I don't even know if I want to mention this, because I've secretly been looking into seeing if anybody holds the rights to Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball because I want to buy it and get this thing going again," Kelce said. "That was the best game ever. It was so electric.
"Could you imagine playing Backyard Football right now on your phone?" Kelce continued. "'Cause you can do that whole thing on your phone. It wasn't that complicated of a game...I love that game."
For those unfortunate few who've never played a Backyard Sports game, the series (released for consoles, computers and mobile devices from 1997-2015) included games for all major North American sports, where players would form a team consisting of Backyard Kids — most notably the GOAT, Pablo Sanchez — and kid-sized versions of popular professional sports stars. Once the player selects their roster, they would play a "Backyard League" season, attempting to become the league champions.
While Kelce didn't seem to know who holds the rights to Backyard Sports, one X user (who claims to be a former director of the Madden franchise) replied to the clip of Kelce talking about it, saying, 'it was bought by a holding corp called Evergreen at an Atari auction about 10 years ago'.
The user also mentioned that Kelce doesn't necessarily have to buy the series' rights in order to create a similar version of the game.
Yet, while they claimed that the Backyard Sports name, 'has no real / tangible value', we would argue that this specific name evokes a lot of nostalgia; and that, if Kelce was to buy the series' rights, keeping the 'Backyard' moniker would be a wise choice for luring former users back in.
What's for certain is that, while Kelce hasn't fully committed to retiring from the NFL, he's clearly looking in to other entrepreneurial opportunities once he does decide to hang the cleats up.
Hopefully this isn't the last we hear about Kelce's interest in reviving Backyard Sports.
