Instead of only putting money into player competitions, why not put some into modding? With QL doing so poorly, maybe some quality mods are exactly what we need. I don't mean major mods, only modifications of duel. The winner could be determined by the popularity of their mod. The mods could be made available for a set amount of time, and when the time expires, the mod played the most wins.

At this point, it would probably be more valuable to run mod tournaments than player tournaments.