The National Basketball Association Finals have arrived, and you know what that means for the media coverage – a lot of headlines about TV ratings. Embittered New York Knicks fans are already preparing their collective “I told you so” with the likelihood of historically low ratings between two small TV market teams, the Oklahoma City Thunder (47^th ranked market) and the Indiana Pacers (from the 25^th ranked market and the team that defeated the Knicks). But for the NBA, its business partners and even for the folks at ABC and ESPN who are broadcasting the Finals, focusing so heavily on TV ratings is just so 1990s. There is a much more complex tableaux of media measurement metrics that are ultimately far more relevant to business success and failure here.

Yes, the NBA Finals TV ratings will likely be low by any historical standard. In addition to the presence of small-market teams, the Finals matchup lacks marquee franchise names like the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. And there is no larger-than-life superstar like LeBron James or Michael Jordan, but how many of those are there?

It’s true that NBA ratings have been falling for years. Last year’s NBA Finals between the Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks averaged 11.3 million viewers, down 27% from 2014 (LeBron James was playing in those), and down 37% from 2004 (with the Lakers and Kobe Bryant). The ratings for the NBA playoffs are actually slightly up this year compared to a year ago. But more broadly, the entire TV ratings universe has fallen 54% in the last 10 years. “Linear TV” – broadcast and cable – now accounts for less than 50% of all the video viewing in the U.S. Is any of this breaking news anymore? Can we broaden our lens a bit in analyzing success and failure?

Most importantly for the solidity of the NBA’s future as well as its present is the new media rights deal it announced last July which is going into effect next season. The NBA closed an 11-year, $76 billion agreement for national TV and streaming distribution with Disney (ESPN and ABC), NBCUniversal (including Peacock) and Amazon. That’s a dollar amount three times larger than the deal the NBA signed with Turner Networks (now part of Warner Bros. Discovery) and Disney nine years ago. None of the new and returning media partners were unaware of the ratings environment when they signed on the dotted line.

As the NBA’s SVP for Partnerships, Lauren Sullivan, told me in the midst of busy Finals prep, the new deal will bring 40% more nationally televised games during the regular season, including weekly national prime time broadcasts on NBC on Tuesday and Sunday nights, as well as a massive increase in nationally streamed games via Peacock and Amazon. There’s little or no ability to predict the future path of ratings, but in a world of future ratings blindness, the one-eyed live sports broadcast remains King. Although overall ratings have fallen for years, audience shares for events such as the NBA Finals are unmatched by anything in the entertainment programming world.

This enhanced distribution helps drive awareness and fan engagement throughout the year, not just during the Finals. Sullivan emphasized throughout the course of our discussion of the NBA Finals that the league’s approach to marketing demands “365-day planning and storytelling [with an] always-on approach” with their marketing partners. Sullivan noted that there are certainly “plus up” efforts by and with marketers around “tentpoles” such as All-Star weekend and the Finals, but partnerships demand “bespoke” efforts with individual marketing and media partners that depend upon the timing of brand product launches and consumer spending habits.

Partnerships have to work for all. NBA team marketing sponsorship revenues topped $1.6 billion last year, and marketers and media partners get access to the breadth of the NBA fan base especially its highly engaged younger audiences, which aren’t easy to reach anymore on linear TV broadcasts. Marketers with ongoing NBA partnerships, including through the Finals, include Puma, Michelob Ultra and YouTube TV.

The metrics around social media fan engagement are increasingly critical, as both Sullivan as well as the NBA’s SVP for Digital and Social Content Bob Carney pointed out to me. According to Carney, the NBA works with “an unbelievably rich community” comprised of the league, broadcast partners like ESPN, digital and social media partners such as Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, individual media talent and a huge creator community that the NBA has cultivated over the course of the last decade.

As Carney pointed out, the NBA social content strategy leans heavily into its Instagram account (with its 90 million followers), and proudly trumpeted the league’s “takeover” of Instagram’s own Instagram account (that’s a thing) which has over 700 million followers. Video highlights are a huge part of the NBA’s content strategy given that social media algorithms are driven by the amount of time spent with videos, and the NBA is constantly looking to create stories with its players, teams and marketing partners that will drive extended video viewing.

One of the immediate winners in the NBA Finals marketing sweepstakes is Converse which has hit the jackpot with its celebrity endorser, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (“SGA”), the NBA’s new MVP and the star of the Finals-playing Thunder, a deal in play long before the Finals. In case you haven’t heard much of him, SGA leads all NBA players in social media engagement in these playoffs with 864 million views. You can add in fellow shoe brand Puma (leaning into the now-laughable designation of Pacers’ star Tyrese Haliburton as “overrated" by his fellow players). Halliburton, that “overrated” guy, is third in social media playoff views with 679 million. Needless to say, partnerships with these stars aren’t going to live or die on TV ratings.

Yeah, but it’s still two small market teams playing in the Finals, right? Carney almost laughed at the notion that young audiences, especially internationally, particularly care about the market size of the NBA Finalists. The Finals will be distributed in 214 countries and territories in 60 languages, with “NBA House” live fan events in Brazil, Canada, Mexico and India, and official viewing parties in China, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It’s all part of the league’s long-term strategy of expanding its global footprint. For those still fixated on the U.S. linear TV ratings, you need to get your eye on the bouncing ball.