I disagree with your  last statement.  Do you know  how hard and  long it take to get good size arena and  your talking about broken seats  needing to be  fixed?? I don't think the game need the "sim" reality/ arena   already has cap on  it. I don't think making managers buy seats all the time is productive. people already lose revenue from un bought seats/
It takes a long time if you never get to a level where you need to finish the rest of the seats. Basically, as a general rule I'd say that you should be expanding arena close to twice a month on average until you reach the point where you can't really make any more money out of it at the level you are. The nice thing about that is that when you do promote again, you start expanding again. 
 the game  already punish team for trying to be unfair,  playing  tie for  enthu and losing  by a  big margin.. Its really, really senseless to  call it tanking .Some call it  building a better stronger team for future games. Whats the point of using the option if the team is going to lose fans, Again which balance it out. The thing is just dont lose. But with gdp feature, ha.. what good is playing Tie for enthu??
Losing by 20-25 because you're facing a team with more enthusiasm or because you're TIEing is one thing. Teams that dress three scrub players and lose by 75+ is another thing. The first one I have no problem with - some teams are just better than others. 
 Losing games  for enthu  is not tanking its making  your team better. I played the majority of my games straight up when I could just  said  "hey ill play for enthu, stamina "which is the smart bet in the long hull. All the fines don't make the game balanced. Thinking every manager  that has milions and is the evil one, is  not the right attitude.. its not hard to get millons but  some team  need them to stay afloat.
Here's an idea that might help: one season, just play TIE every single game (league and Cup, regardless of anything else). You'll end up with a better record and if you make the playoffs, be in better shape to make some noise there as well. 
 You  want to build for the future,  2 million can do that. You cant  build on  500K. Might as well quit. Nothing fair in  sports. Not  all  mangers in sports care about winning, . They buy player to do that and rack up revenue. Some manager  don't care about training  players ,they buy players to do that. When a player gets hurt, they  are put injured reserved  that set by the funds of that    team,  BB dont have tht. You go get  a new player  you better be under the exempt tax.or fined.
You can build for the future with less than 500k easily, at a lower level - but you have to work at it, and it'll take time. It's not something where you can get to $500k and say "Okay, I'm going to buy a team to win" because you'll fail miserably. If you don't have a plan for making your team better next season, and the season after, and the season after that, it's polite to wave at the teams that do as they blow by you on their way up the ladder.