NFL star Jason Kelce is on a mission to find out who owns the rights to the Backyard Sports franchise, as the Philadelphia Eagles center is interested in reviving Backyard Baseball and Backyard Football games.
In the latest episode of podcast New Heights, which Jason co-hosts with his younger brother Travis, the two briefly reminisce about playing Backyard Football on the computer before Jason reveals that he has been “secretly” trying to figure out who owns the rights because he wants to bring back Backyard Baseball and Backyard Football for modern platforms.
“I don’t even know if I want to mention this cause I have secretly been looking into seeing if anybody holds the rights to Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball, cause I wanna buy it and get this thing going again,” Jason said. “It’s the best game ever. It was so electric. Can you imagine playing Backyard Football right now on your phone? Cause you can do that whole thing on your phone, it wasn’t that complicated.”
The official New Heights X/Twitter also posted a call to action, with a snippet of the clip along with a caption asking who currently holds the rights to the Backyard Sports series to get in touch with the Kelce brothers.
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
The Backyard Sports series, which began in 1997 with the release of Backyard Baseball, is a series of sports games that feature kid-sized versions of professional sports stars, including Tom Brady and Tim Duncan. The series had entries in several sports, including the aforementioned Baseball and American Football games and games based on Ice Hockey, Soccer, Basketball, and skateboarding. Originally owned by Humongous Entertainment, the rights would eventually go to Atari. In 2013, the rights to Backyard Sports were acquired by The Evergreen Group.
According to the American legal information website Justia, Day 6 Sports Group owns the trademarks for the Backyard Sports franchise. The most recent entries in the Backyard Sports franchise, Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015 and Basketball 2015, were released in 2015 for iOS and Android. Both games were developed by Day 6 Sports Group.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
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