ESPN and IMG had already concluded much of their Serie A media rights negotiations when a news item of interest popped up last month in sports news feeds around the globe:



Cristiano Ronaldo was leaving Real Madrid to sign with Italian champions Juventus.



As ESPN executive vice president of programming and scheduling Burke Magnus explained in an interview with The Athletic last week, the news that Ronaldo was coming to the Serie A was a massive stroke of good fortune for ESPN, which at that time had secured about 90 percent of the Serie A inventory from IMG, the global sports agency which owns the international rights to the Italian league.



“Originally we were going to take a big portion of the package but not the entire package,” Magnus said. “That piece of the negotiation was done prior to his announcement. So I file his announcement under sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. His decision got us interested in a comprehensive...