TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Craig Hockenberry:

While you’re looking for meaning in the shadows of an Apple press invite, you’re missing something important: Apple is producing content for its own distribution channel.

For the month of September, Apple is letting customers view live shows through a combination of apps, the web, and Apple TV. It’s the fourth year of the iTunes Festival in London, but this is the first year that it’s been broadcast via iTunes.

Smart. Hockenberry’s absolutely right—it’s a big deal. Apple’s proving they can do live events on a large scale, and they’re showing how big their platform is.

I don’t think it would be crazy at all for the NFL to make Sunday Ticket an Apple device-exclusive. DirecTV only has 20 million U.S. subscribers. Apple has 400 million active iTunes accounts with valid credit card numbers and has sold nearly 400 million iOS devices.

Of course, the number of Apple TV’s they’ve sold is much smaller, but at $99, sales would skyrocket if Sunday Ticket was available on it. DirecTV has Sunday Ticket locked up until 2014, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the NFL and Apple work together then.