If I shot the event on Panavision lenses with my four-year old Galaxy A30, would the quality match that of the iPhone?
If yes, than you are correct to point out the difference.
If no, than the way it was phrased was not that wrong, after all. Using the iPhone did make a difference.
Not sure why anyone would compare a new flagship with a 5-year-old budget phone (at least if we're trying to avoid bias). Apple's cameras are good but not the best (if there is such thing as "best"), and competition is tight: https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/#sort-camera
The main difference is nobody's running massive marketing campaigns for "Shot on Huawei" or "Shot on Pixel"
Xiaomi is running a massive "Shot on MI $X $Y-AI camera" watermark campaign, but they aren't restricting it to flagship models, so you'll also see it on barely passable shots from $50 phones.
If you record it raw, and make some post-processing, you'd get very close.
The lenses are the most relevant part of a camera. Outside of that, the next most relevant part of the iPhone camera is software. (And I'm sure there's post-processing on that video too.)
As I recall a very good write up of the last shot on iPhone event, massive LED lighting panels were a big part of the equation as were, of course, an expert video team who knew how to use the gear, stage it, and process the footage.
If yes, than you are correct to point out the difference. If no, than the way it was phrased was not that wrong, after all. Using the iPhone did make a difference.