Did NFL force MLB to reschedule Phillies vs Astros World Series? Fox exec steers clear of head-to-head battle with league

The sports world is fully in the throes of the NFL season right now. From August to February, many sports fans aren't paying attention to much else, despite the fact that several other major sports leagues operate and have playoff games or other important parts of their seasons.

The World Series in Major League Baseball coincides with the first half of the football season. Naturally, the most important playoff baseball games will draw some of the football audience away.

For the first time since 1947, though, Major League Baseball is going to defer to football this time around. The Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros will travel back to Philadelphia following Games 1 and 2 on Friday and Saturday.

Ordinarily, Sunday night is the prime window for sports viewing and the World Series would want to operate within that, but it doesn't seem like they want to clash with Sunday Night Football, even if it's a regular season game.

Bill Wanger, Fox Sports executive vice president and head of programming, told USA TODAY Sports:

“Obviously, we didn’t want to go head-to-head with the NFL on multiple nights. If you said, let’s start the World Series on a Thursday, you’d potentially be going head-to-head with the NFL on four nights. It’s a giant jigsaw puzzle, but every event has its place, and we maneuver the various properties to maximize all of them.”

The decision to play the first game on Friday instead of Thursday, which would have been three full days after both teams eliminated their opponents, is most likely to avoid conflict with Thursday Night Football.

The way the schedule is set up also puts Game 7, barring any potential rainouts, on Saturday night, so as to once again not conflict with Sunday Night Football.

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Why wouldn't MLB demand the prime time audience from the NFL?

In America, football is king. No other sport really comes close to its dominance, not even America's pasttime.

Baseball is waning in popularity and they also know that football is doing anything but. As a result, it's probably a wise decision to steer clear of football programming.

Championship Series - San Diego Padres v Philadelphia Phillies - Game Five

They want the biggest audience they can get for their biggest series of the year. Normally, that would entail grabbing up those prime time slots.

However, they know they'll lose some of their audience to the prime time football games and that's something they desperately want to avoid.