You could take an interpretation that big players getting a different rate than small players isn't special treatment but normal procedure, so a big player not being given the big player rate is the special treatment. The problem with any language dealing with equality is that there are different ways to define equal and very specific definitions can result in different results. This is also true for the concept of random and there is even a mathematical paradox related to this (which is great for stripping off all the baggage that real world examples bring with them).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability)