That is a conspiracy that we can not prove. It is a known fact that a lot of players are demoralize by arena being difficult. Do you think they will spend more when they are demoralize?
Only the top 1% (most likely) or the players who pushes for plat are the ones who will spend to be better in arena.
The content creators are the ones who are enticing players to spend by releasing summoning videos. Players hope they will have their "luck" too, specially seeing one account with hunderds of shards, thus spending money for shards, and not for becoming better in the game.
If you see a content creators say that don't spend on shards and spend on refills, and/or farming dungeons, then those are the ones that wants their viewers to become better. A champion will only be good when it has good gears. I was quoted recently when I show my Vlad deals 150k damage in gold 4, that even the crappiest champion when given gears they can perform well, and that is true.
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My theory why gold 4 seems to be much easier is this, specially after arena reset, some players put easy arena defense to get their ranks lower, thinking that they will have "easier" opponents at lower ranks.
Now, players in gold 1 don't want their ranks lower, they want to stay in gold so they will put their best defense.
Again, this is just my theory.