Originally Posted by
LowValueCustomer
Honestly I wouldn't be so sure about that. They prepurchase hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of skymiles and invest heavily in acquiring cardholders from the Skymiles ecosystem. It's functionally an investment in the Skymiles program itself, much like Skymiles' other creditors after its pandemic mortgages. If I'm a lawyer for a major bank looking to make that kind of investment, I want to ensure that the ongoing value of the collateral is protected, no different than forcing homeowners to buy insurance for mortgaged property.
If they don't have some sort of veto power over Skymiles changes, then I suspect at a minimum they've made Delta guarantee a baseline revenue figure for Amex, and if Delta screws the pooch to the point that Amex' revenue falls through that floor, it'll be Delta on the hook to make up the difference.
There is no way in hell Delta legal would let Delta give any other company veto power over how they structure their own FF program. Amex isn't the only bank they could go to with their business, they could choose lots of other banks. They don't need to sell control over their key profit center to get a credit card deal.
However your second suggestion seems possible: if Delta felt confident these crazy changes would drive MORE card spend they might have just said hey, Amex, we don't care about your objections, we're gonna do this anyway. My main point is that I highly doubt Amex would have the power to stop this even if they did see how disastrous it would be.
My personal guess is SOME Amex folks likely had some reservations about this whole thing but their objections were talked over by the Delta folks and Amex management might have gone along because the lounge access changes might have saved them some money in fees. But also: if flyers abandon Delta branded cards that doesn't mean Amex will lose all that spend as some of the loss will go to other Amex cards.