Here is the solution to more cost efficient tournaments and to potentially get more interested.
Base the amount of winnings in a tournament per entry.
Base the amount per entry on Expert Level: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Ect.
Tournament Example
Silver Level: 10 SPS added to pot per entry
100 players sign up and the tournament begins
System puts 10 x 100 SPS in the tournament pool
Winners share in a total of 1000 SPS tokens
Winners payouts should be as flat as possible
Meaning pay as many spots as possible (there should be losers)
SPS numbers can be adjusted to whatever is reasonable. In this model its optional if you want to add more per entry for gold cards (I wouldn't) but if you ask me it isn't needed. The benefit in gold card tournaments is the smaller player field playing for the rewards (less competition not more rewards is the benefit). This will cut back significantly on tournament cost and allow all tournaments to run. PS. we need set specific tournaments. Alpha+Beta together since Beta is a repeat of Alpha. It would likely help with multiple markets plus potentially pull some stagnant users back into the tournament scene. My expertise in tournaments: I ran hundreds of online poker tournaments.
This all sounds reasonable, but would require quite some rework of tournaments. A major advantage of the proposal above is, that it is very low effort.