I think it's less that brehs don't play the game, and more that a lot of brehs play 2K for one or two specific things and largely ignore the others, so the numbers aren't making sense to them.
For a content creator, I can absolutely believe a claims of crazy spending on a year of 2K. Considering that MyTeam has seasonal releases of cards, and even has specialized runs within those seasons, I imagine there are a lot of people dropping pretty decent money just to get footage for pack videos, let alone any other random fukkery.