That was not the case at all with the old arenas, CCP introduced it, abandoned it, despite there were dozens of posts about the problems of abyssal PVP. And finally CCP removed it. Its sad that it ended like that.
The fact that you not always get a fight, but free loot then could lurk people in.
I have made an iteration here already. Systems that work with queuing system as the events, don’t work that well for that. We saw in the T3D 2v2 that you ended up sitting in queue for hours without getting a fight. As the fits used in old abyssal pvp are expensive and skill intensive, too few players did it to make that system work well there.
So overall, for the old arena or similar, it would be better to have the old system where you enter the arena directly instead of waiting in a queue. By directly it would be better to have it behind pve sites to prevent collusion/massqueuing and to keep gay fits out.