The league was design so if a free user wanted first place in any tier they would have to...
- Start at the reset point as points reset to max at reset ranking.
- Be active enough so their battle points never max out.
- Have a strong enough character, armor set, and team to beat ever single other team as well as those with similar stat range.

Basically your going to need some legendary armor that boosts your build girls of matching class that are 5 star legendary(maxed out) and class stat that is extremely high. The rewards were mainly also made as based on its last tier rewards so I guess it was an over sight that a lower tier can give 1 extra battle point over the less coins and cash but tbh the battle points are not as effective at building the character than those two cash flows which directly help you get armor, girls, and higher stats. Spending coins to get ahead isnt actually good as the more you do it the possible less return you get but even then if your stats are not high enough an early lead on the chart will be lost by any activate member with much higher stats as you cant beat them andif they can beat everyone and they are trying you basically wasted money on a head start. I seen it happen a few times with people trying to p2w in the league but the p2w actually start outside on build up.