I haven't played tournaments for a long time either, I'll have to take a look at them again.
I understand the time problem, I don't even manage to use the energy regularly for my Modern Battles and I just run the bot in Wild.
I've made tournament battles my number 1 priority because you can earn more $SPS and it is fun to play with different formats at different leagues.
I still enjoy playing Moddrn ranked when I can, but I use the bot to help me use my energy when I only have time for tournaments.
So far so good. I'm still fleeing more tournaments than I would like, so it hasn't been perfect, but last season I made over 13000 $SPS from tournaments!
Yeah... I wasn't joking when I said tournaments are much more lucrative than ranked play. Even if you don't make Day 2, there is still plenty of SPS to win just by winning a few battles.
Tournaments are a great reason to invest in cards and stake SPS!