This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

　　At the beginning of last week we announced that the ninth season of the SLTV Star Series was kicking off and would launch with a prize pool boosting bundle, fast forward six days and that bundle has already double the prize pool by raising a whopping $80,000 thanks to the Dota 2 community.

　　The success of the bundle makes it one of the fastest selling ones yet and now guarantees a total first place prize of $54,000 (after removing the funds set aside for travel costs).

　　The ninth season of the SLTV Star Series provides a total of 222 matches to be watched online due to the introduction of the global league system, for the first time in Star Ladder's history we now have an American, Chinese and Korean league to go along with the European & CIS league.

　　To put this into perspective of just how successful the bundle has been the Season 8 of the Star Series raised the prize pool by a total of $84,357 over the entire season last year. The SLTV Star Series Season 9 bundle is already sitting on $81,702 and the season has only just started to kick off around the world.

　　The finals which are set to be held on April 17th to the 20th will be hosted at the Kiev Cybersports Arena and will see a total of eight teams attend the LAN event making this the biggest offline event for SLTV yet.

　　The Dota 2 Prize Pool Tracking site for Starladder 9: http://dota2.cyborgmatt.com/prizetracker/starladder9The bundle also comes with an exclusive Lich set, a loading screen for the Lich set and a new SLTV IX loading screen: http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20417?r=258

　　SLTV IX Loading Screen

　　Frozen Star Lich Loading Screen

　　Exclusive Frozen Star Lich Set