True. I know of APs that count all that garbage as their profit. They lose 2 grand doing whatever gambling, but the casino comps them a room, a couple meals, and some trinkets like a sweatshirt on gift day and they think they have won.
For many years, my partner and I ate at least 1 meal, sometimes 2, every day (even days we weren't playing) at a casino, courtesy of the casino. I never included those over-priced meals as "winnings". It was just a perk. And the value to me, wasn't whatever over-inflated price the casino put on it. The value was what we would have spent had we paid cash to grab a sandwich for lunch somewhere.
The funny thing was watching how the casinos rang up comps. Lunch buffet cost $8.99. Paying with points, the cashier would ring up 15.00 comped (each). Only 8.99 would be deducted from comp points, but for their bookkeeping, you received a value of $30.00.
Back in the day, I have also seen/read card counters tone down their spread, so they could get in 4 hours of play to get a room comp. Ok, their normal spread was worth $80/hr, they toned it down to where they were making $40 for those 4 hours, meaning the cost of that comped room was $160 to them. Had they just paid for the room back then on a weekday it was $39.
Now I used to network with a guy, who counted cards at a high level using a very small bet spread. A break even type bet spread of like 1-3 maybe betting $300 - $900 (and this was 10 years ago that he told me, maybe longer that he actually practiced this). So he would basically break even long-term. There was no heat at a spread like that. And then the casino would shower him with gifts, including gift cards (think visa) and shopping sprees in their higher end gift shop (think jewelry). He would then take everything he received including tickets to shows, and sell it on ebay. That was were his profit came from, not from the 1-3 spread counting cards. I always thought this was creative but man, a lot of work. But again, a $2000 shopping spree at the high end gift shop was really only worth a couple hundred dollars that you could sell that crap for.
So the price the casino put on things is just funny. It is basically a Donald Trump Grift.