How a viral campaign to bring back SlamBall culminated in ESPN airtime

People have started to learn that if enough of them ask online for something to return, there’s actually a chance it could happen.

This has been the case for numerous fast food items whose eliminations from menus were a minor setback for a major comeback — such as the Taco Bell Mexican pizza, the chicken snack wrap from Wendy’s or Chick-fil-A’s spicy chicken biscuit all getting reinstated due to popular demand — and Friday night it’s going to happen in sports when SlamBall airs on ESPN.

“Two-and-a-half years ago, this hashtag #BringBackSlamBall started circulating, in conjunction with 20-year-old SlamBall highlights,” SlamBall co-founder Mason Gordon told The Post, repeating with amazement that the clips going viral happened two decades ago.

“On social media every week it was happening like clockwork. SlamBall somewhere along the way became this mythical thing and captured the heart of the internet.”

For those outside the millennial demographic, SlamBall is trampoline basketball, and it features a perpetual series of facial dunks or blocks at the rim.

The sport had seasons on TNN/Spike TV in 2002 and 2003, plus a season on CSTV (later CBS Sports Network) in 2007 and one on Versus (which later became NBCSN) in 2008.

“When we first looked at the metrics of how #BringBackSlamBall was tracked, there were over 200 million cumulative views,” Gordon mused. “Now it’s over half a billion.”

Thus began a multi-year process in which Gordon solicited investors and the league secured a rights deal.

Front Office Sports reported in March that the league raised $11 million, led by Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Sports Ventures and Eberg Capital, with other investors including Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, Sixers co-owner David Blitzer, serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk and NBA star Blake Griffin.

Starting Friday night at 7 pm ET, SlamBall will air on ESPN; most of the games afterward will be on ESPN+, though there is another ESPN session next Thursday night and the final game will be on ESPN2 on Aug. 17.

The events will all take place in Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas.

Ken Carter, the inspiration for Samuel L. Jackson’s “Coach Carter,” was one of SlamBall’s original coaches, and he will be returning.

Otherwise there will not be many if other people in the league who are already household names.

Perhaps there could have been some buzz if SlamBall had sought celebrities or former pro athletes to play in the league, like some combination of Big 3 and MTV’s “Rock N Jock,” but Gordon told The Post he wanted electric athletes instead.

“Our plan here is to engage with the most explosive, telegenic, hyperkinetic athletes possible,” he said.

Gordon explained an analogy that he wants SlamBall to be, in a sense, like UFC.

“If UFC took all these different pugilistic styles and mixed them together into a sports product that young people especially gravitated to as boxing demographics were aging out, then what SlamBall is is pulling all the best elements from different team sports like basketball, football and hockey all blended together into something new,” he said.

“With a bit of a video game mentality mixed in for good measure.”