This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Backyard Sports" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Backyard Sports
Series logo as of 2024
Genre	Sports
Developers	Humongous Entertainment (1997–2005) Humongous, Inc. (2006–2010) Day6 Sports Group (2015) Mega Cat Studios (2024–present)
Publishers	Humongous Entertainment (1997–2000) Infogrames (2000–2003) Atari (2003–2010) Fingerprint Network (2015) Playground Productions (2024–present)
Platforms	Windows,Mac,PlayStation,Game Boy Advance,GameCube,PlayStation 2,Nintendo DS,Wii,Xbox 360,iOS,Android,PlayStation 5,Nintendo Switch
First release	Backyard Baseball October 10, 1997
Latest release	Backyard Basketball '01 andBackyard Hockey '02[a] November 13, 2025

Backyard Sports (originally branded asJunior Sports^[1][2] and thenHumongous Sports) is a video game series released for consoles, computers, and mobile devices created byHumongous Entertainment. The series is best known for starring a diverse cast of fictional children as well as child versions of famous professional sports athletes, such asAlbert Pujols,Paul Pierce,Barry Bonds,Tim Duncan,Clint Mathis,Kevin Garnett,Tom Brady,David Ortiz,Joe Thornton, andAndy Macdonald. TheBackyard Sports series is currently or was previously licensed bythe five major professional American sports leagues:Major League Baseball (MLB),Major League Soccer (MLS), theNational Football League (NFL), theNational Basketball Association (NBA), and theNational Hockey League (NHL), as well as their affiliatedplayers associations. The series has changed ownership and developers several times since Humongous's closure in 2005 and has endured a years-long hiatus from 2010 to 2024 (excluding a brief mobile game revival in 2015), when the franchise was revived by its current publisher Playground Productions.

The series includes five sub-series based on different team sports—Backyard Baseball,Backyard Soccer (association football),Backyard Football (American football),Backyard Basketball, andBackyard Hockey (ice hockey)—as well as the single game non-team sport-basedBackyard Skateboarding. In the games, players form a team consisting of Backyard Kids and (in most entries) professional athletes as children, which players take through a "Backyard League" season, attempting to become the champions of their chosen sport. Players can create their own custom characters, starting inBackyard Football (1999). An additional aspect of the games is the use of Power-Ups, allowing players to gain "Super-abilities". For instance, "Super-Dunk" allows a basketball player to make a dunk from nearly anywhere on the court, "Leap Frog" allows a football player to jump over the entire defensive line, and "Ice Cream Truck" causes the other team to be distracted for a brief period.

The series began in late 1997 whenHumongous Entertainment, owned byGT Interactive, created the first game in the franchise:Backyard Baseball.^[3] Later, GT Interactive was purchased byInfogrames and was renamed as Infogrames, Inc.^[4] Infogrames allowed Humongous Entertainment to expand the series, and Humongous later developed more titles such asBackyard Soccer,Backyard Football,Backyard Basketball,Backyard Hockey, andBackyard Skateboarding. Following the buyout by Infogrames, these titles from theBackyard series were released for game consoles, including theGameCube,Game Boy Advance,PlayStation 2,Xbox 360, andWii. In 2003, Infogrames, Inc. was renamed asAtari, Inc.

In August 2005, Atari, Inc. sold Humongous Entertainment to their majority parentInfogrames Entertainment SA for shares worthUS$10.3 million. After the sale, Infogrames shuttered Humongous Entertainment and secured the studio's assets to Humongous, Inc., a holding company formed solely for this purpose.^[5] With this point, newerBackyard Sports titles were developed by other studios for consoles and computers, with Atari, Inc. continuing to hold publishing rights to the series under license from Humongous, Inc. In March 2008, Infogrames purchased the remaining shares of Atari, Inc. that they didn't own and renamed itself to Atari SA the following year.^[6][7] The two Atari businesses continued to release entries in the series within this time.^[8]

In July 2013, private equity firm The Evergreen Group bought theBackyard Sports franchise during the Atari bankruptcy proceedings for its portfolio company, Epic Gear LLC.^[9]

In February 2014, Day6 Sports Group acquired the franchise from Epic Gear.^[10] The company announced to relaunch the franchise in December withBackyard Sports NBA Basketball for smartphones and tablets, with Golden State Warriors point guardStephen Curry as the cover athlete.^[11] Two mobile games,Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015 andBackyard Sports: NBA Basketball 2015, were released in February 2015, but Day6 did not release any further titles afterward, as the company was acquired by a European investment group in 2016^[12] and later went out of business in 2020.^[13]

In April 2019, Humongous's social media pages tweeted an image of the originalJunior Sports logo, hinting at a possible re-release of the original games and/or the developer having re-secured the rights to the series proper,^[14][1][2] but a week prior, Humongous replied to a Twitter post saying that they didn't own the rights to the franchise.

After Day6's closure in 2020, the franchise was purchased by Ari Pinchot and Stuart Avi Savitsky via Backyard Sports LLC in 2021. While Backyard Sports LLC owns the trademarks associated with the brand, in 2024, Playground Productions LLC, a company founded and run by former schoolteacher Lindsay Barnett, began to work with Pinchot and Savitsky in relaunching the IP across gaming and other verticals.^[15][16][17] This collaboration was accompanied by an animated trailer featuring several of the Backyard Kids preparing to start a game of baseball.^[18][19]

The franchise regained media attention in January 2024, when NFL playerJason Kelce, in an episode of his and his brotherTravis's podcastNew Heights, reminisced about playingBackyard Football andBackyard Baseball, and stated his desire to purchase the rights to the brand to develop a new game in the series,^[20][21][13] unaware of Pinchot and Savitsky's 2021 purchase. It received further attention that August whenBobby Witt Jr. of theKansas City Royals used a baseball bat themed after Pablo Sanchez, a popular character in the series, to hit a home run against theCincinnati Reds during Major League Baseball's Players' Weekend.^[22]

Playground Productions and developerMega Cat Studios began the revival ofBackyard Sports with a series of remastered classic titles, includingBackyard Baseball '97,Backyard Soccer '98,Backyard Baseball '01,Backyard Football '99,Backyard Basketball '01, andBackyard Hockey '02.^[23][24][25] Playground Productions plans to bring the remasters tomobile devices while developing a new originalBackyard Sports title, which is expected to release in 2026.^{[26][27][28][29][30]}

In early 2025, Playground Productions confirmed toRolling Stone that they had signed over 60 athletes to rejoin or debut in the franchise, includingBarry Sanders,Lisa Leslie,Dan Marino, andMark McGwire.^[31]

In 2002, alive-action animated hour-long special based on theBackyard Football games entitledBackyard Basics aired onCBS on November 16, featuring the then quarterback for thePhiladelphia Eagles,Donovan McNabb.^[38]

In 2016,Cross Creek Pictures and Crystal City Entertainment were reportedly in development of a film based onBackyard Sports with producersBrian Oliver and Ari Daniel Pinchot.^[39] No news about the film has been revealed since.

Playground Productions announced in 2024, along with the announcement of a newBackyard Sports title, that they have plans to expand the franchise into film.^[40][27] On October 10, 2025, Playground Productions revealed that they have wrapped production on an animated special set for release in early 2026.^[41] A few weeks later, it was announced that the special would be entitledSticky Situation and thatTiffany Haddish,Arturo Castro,Christopher Mintz-Plasse,Donald Faison,Adam Pally,Ego Nwodim,Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Ashleigh Crystal Hairston had joined the cast.^[42]

• Official website
• Backyard Sports series atMobyGames

• Atari games
• Backyard Sports
• Fantasy sports video games
• Humongous Entertainment games
• Infogrames games
• Video game franchises
• Video game franchises introduced in 1997
• Video games developed in the United States

• Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments
• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from March 2014
• All articles needing additional references
• Short description is different from Wikidata