Bring a regularly scheduled tournament...

Ditch the character/ship rewards, keep the other currency rewards.

These events are a great opportunity to play different squads (or just old arena teams) against other human built squads. It's a pleasant bit of variety.

No need to piggyback otherwise inaccessible characters (every time) on an otherwise pleasant change of pace.

Tournaments themselves are fun. Missing out on otherwise inaccessible characters is not. Keep the tournaments coming, ditch the character connection.