Is it against the terms of service

There are ways of solving the OP's problem. The top 100 of every shard would hate it :)

• remove crystal income from the arenas and replace them with gear prize boxes like in raids
  
• add more crystals to GAC, for example 2 for setting defence, 5 for winning on offence, and improve league promotion crystals like 5-fold
  
• add/increase crystal income elsewhere (harder GW, add to raids, 9-level battles like x1 crystal at certain drop rate)
  
• make arenas the (aside from gear/currency rewards) as the practice sandboxes people were asking
  
• on the first of each months in a round robin shuffle each even and odd position into the next shard
  
• add portraits/achievements titles for the 1st, top 10, top 20, to 50
  

This will incentivize the GAC play (more like the arena anyway, that has both squads and fleets) and will take care of the OP's problem and many others's problem and should not disincentivize arenas for most. It may or may not be a problem for the top 100 and spenders that keep this game going, the impact of such a solution needs to be studied from the game's economy perspective.

I hope the devs are listening ;) @CG_SBCrumb ? Probably not, but anyway...

Now let's the flame wars and troll wars begin \/ \/ \/ haha, as I am sure this will not be popular among some participants here :)