Machinima Brings E-Sports To The CW With ‘Chasing The Cup’

Machinima is making big moves in the world of e-sports. The online video network, which caters to gamers, has brought its e-sports web series Mortal Kombat X: Machinima’s Chasing the Cup to digital platform CW Seed, with plans to air the show’s finale on The CW.

Chasing the Cup, which first launched in 2014, follows top e-sports pros as they compete at major international events. While early seasons focused on the popular title League of Legends, the latest edition will profile top gamers within the Mortal Kombat community. The fighting game franchise’s latest release, Mortal Kombat X, arrived in 2015, and the new, five-episode Chasing the Cup season focuses on a competition that began in November of that year.

The first three episodes of the new Chasing the Cup season are now available on CW Seed on January 25th. New episodes will arrive weekly, and the finale will air on TV as a one-hour special on The CW. It will go live at 8 PM EST on February 15th

In the premiere, we meet the season’s five subjects, who are all vying to win $100,000.

“As video games and eSports become more mainstream, broadcast networks are looking for content to attract this highly valuable audience. Since it began more than a decade ago, Machinima has been creating some of the most popular and watched shows in these genres,” said Daniel Tibbets, CCO of Machinima, in a press release. “Machinima’s Chasing The Cup is an incredible series that shows what it takes to become the world’s greatest gamers and we look forward to working with the CW on this series for a long time.”

All of the parties involved in Chasing the Cup are all linked together through Warner Bros. The entertainment company is an investor in Machinima, the owner of The CW, and the publisher of the Mortal Kombat games.