I note that "Improved tournament system" is a feature in development, but I don't know the plans.
How about establishing an official champion for each game type? The official tournament for a game type would start at the same time each year (but game type tournament starts would be staggered throughout the year). The winner would hold the title until the next year's tournament was won.
The aim of this is to have regular meaningful tournaments. Brainking is the best site of its kind, and winning a title here would be prestiguous. For example, why not try to attract some chess grandmasters to play here, including those that play correspondence chess? (Maybe there are some here already that play under pseuodonyms?)
The difficulty might be establishing time limits to ensure that a tournament with several entrants can be finished within a year! Maybe every two years would be better.