On the other hand, if even a modest fraction of their applicants apply and pay the annual fee but never complete the high spend and thus don't get the bonus miles, they make a lot of money on that compared to their "normal" cards where if someone fails at the spend (which isn't quite as likely at lower spend thesholds, I would think), they still haven't paid a dime of annual fee the first year, so that bank doesn't end up able to say to itself "gotcha on that!" the way they can with Exec card spend failurites.