From a $50,000 base prize pool from last season, Star Series season 9 will have an increased prize to $80,000 base cash prize. As with the previous, $2.50 will be incremented into the prize pool for every DotaTV ticket sold. The ticket, which reportedly will come with a Lich Set, a loading screen and a battle bonus, is not yet available on the Dota 2 store as of the moment.

The prize distribution is also rescaled so that as before, all teams on the LAN finals will be receiving a portion of the prize. The first to fourth place this season will have 45%, 20%, 14% and 8% of the total prize pool, compared to the 50%, 25%, 15% and 10% respectively from before. More than $80,000 was added to the prize pool last year from the DotaTV ticket sales.

The ninth season of Star Series will have four different qualifiers: Europe, American, China and Korea. It will also feature eight teams into the LAN finals, which is twice as much as the number on the previous seasons. The LAN finals is scheduled on 17-20 April.

The first region to start its main qualifiers is Korea. It will start today, 4 March, and will go on until 29 March. The top four teams after the best-of-one round-robin will advance into the regional finals, which will be a double-elimination tournament. The top team after the regional finals will be Korea's representative on the LAN finals.

Notable is the absence of NSL Season 3 winner team Zephyr. According to LD on Reddit, Nexon was in charge of handling the invitations and decided not to include Zephyr in the qualification league. 

Details about the Chinese and American qualifers are not yet fully disclosed. China will start 9 March, while the American qualifers would possibly start at least after the upcoming LAN tournament this weekend. Both of those qualifiers will follow the same format as the Korean's one. The European qualifier, which features 16 teams, will have its top four teams advancing directly into the LAN finals. It is scheduled to go on from 5 March to 7 April.

Six of the eight Star Series seasons were won by Ukranian team Natus Vincere. The two titles that they didn't win was taken by Alliance (known as No Tidehunter back in Season 5).

Source: Starladder.tv