CEVO have announced their ninth season of league play across all divisons, with format, schedule, and prizes laid out in detail.

A notable feature of CEVO's official announcement of its ninth season is a lack of detail for its Professional division with the stipulation being instead that the company have "some exciting changes coming to the Season 9 Professional Division."

However, for all the other divisions of CEVO play (Main, Intermediate, Amateur, and Free), a prize-pool breakdown and overall format have been laid down for the league.

CEVO Season 9 promises exciting changes to its Professional Division

One important change is that teams playing in Amateur, Intermediate, and Main divisions will no longer choose maps via an antiquated "map of the week" format but rather through best-of-one veto.

The Season 9 schedule is as follows:

• s9 Team Registration + Preseason (Monday, November 16th, 2015 - Thursday, December 31st, 2015)
• s9 Online Regular Season (Sunday, January 3rd, 2016 – Thursday, March 3rd, 2016)
• s9 Online Playoffs (Monday, March 7th, 2016 - Monday, April 4th, 2016)

Prize-pool distributions across the leagues are as follows:

• Main Division (NA/EU Restricted skill divisions) - $20.00 (Early Bird) / $25.00 per player - $7,500.00 prize pool (per region)
  • 1st (60%) - $4,500.00 + automatic invite to s10 Professional Placement Tournament
  • 2nd (27%) - $2,025.00 + automatic invite to s10 Professional Placement Tournament
  • 3rd (13%) - $975.00 + automatic invite to s10 Professional Placement Tournament
  • 4th-6th - 1 month FREE CEVO MVP coupon for each player on roster + automatic invite to s10 Professional Placement Tournament

 

• Intermediate Division (NA/EU Open entry skill divisions) - $12.50 (Early Bird) / $15.00 per player - $4,000.00 prize pool (per region)
  • 1st (60%) - $2,400.00 + automatic moveup to s10 Main skill division
  • 2nd (27%) - $1,080.00 + automatic moveup to s10 Main skill division
  • 3rd (13%) - $520.00 + automatic moveup to s10 Main skill division
  • 4th-6th - 1 month FREE CEVO MVP coupon for each player on roster + automatic moveup to s10 Main skill division
  • 7th-16th - automatic moveup to s10 Main skill division

 

• Amateur Division (NA/EU Open entry skill division) - $7.50 (Early Bird) / $10.00 per player - $1,000.00 prize pool (per region)
  • 1st (60%) - $600.00 + automatic moveup to s10 Main skill division 
  • 2nd (27%) - $270.00 + automatic moveup to s10 Main skill division
  • 3rd (13%) - $130.00 + automatic moveup to s10 Main skill division 
  • 4th-6th - 1 month FREE CEVO MVP coupon for each player on roster + automatic moveup to s10 Intermediate skill division 
  • 4th-32nd - automatic moveup to s10 Intermediate skill division

 

• FREE Division (NA/EU Open entry skill divisions) - FREE-to-Play
  • 1st-3rd - automatic moveup & 5x FREE entry into s10 Intermediate skill division 
  • 4th-6th - 1 month FREE CEVO MVP coupon for each player on roster

As previously mentioned, all the pay-to-play divisions will conduct a best-of-one veto process which is designed to facilitate the development of a map pool for competing teams.

Early bird registration for CEVO Season 9 is open until Thursday, December 31st Midnight, Eastern Standard Time and can be completed here.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter