Here's my unsolicited advice

-Invite authors to submit their latest dev versions. Lots of people likes to know the playing strength of private dev versions. Some authors will also be watching the games and will join the chat, making engine enthusiasts more interested.
-Create excitement, advertise and market your tournament.
-Make joining the chat easy. It's currently requiring Facebook login
-For monetizations, you can make donors VIP status in the chat like TCEC, but that will be if your site has more traffic later.
-Advertise the set of opening positions to be used
-Advertise the list of participants including latest private dev versions
-Advertise the hardware to be used
-Create hype for the tournament
-You probably need to tie up with a business/marketing partner