Hoping to take advantage of this weekend’s NFL double-header, Fox is premiering its highly-anticipated “Almost Human” in a two-part event Sunday and Monday at 8 pm ET.

The JJ Abrams-produced futuristic cop drama takes place in a world where every human police officer is given an android partner. Karl Urban tackles the human half of this pairing, while Michael Ealy plays the android.

In late October, Fox pushed the original Nov. 4 premiere date back in the hopes that this Sunday’s NFL doubleheader on the network could give the show a nice boost in the ratings. The move was part of much larger rollout strategy that has placed an emphasis on marketing to sports fans.

“We’ve been really fortunate to have a great sports platform available to us to promote the show–with both the NFL audience and the MLB audience in the biggest event of the year, the World Series,” said Shannon Ryan, Fox’s EVP of marketing and communications.

Fox cut a 30-second spot earlier this season that saw Cletus, the “NFL on Fox” robot, square off against one of the MX43 android cops from the show. Sunday will see MX43 street teams in the stands at the NFL games, and “Almost Human” co-star Minka Kelly will appear on the NFL pre-show.

And during this year’s World Series, Fox aired special Shazam-enabled promos that would set a premiere reminder in viewers’ phones.

Ryan said that while the delayed premiere date was stressful “for just a split second,” it provided the marketing team with an opportunity to fill in areas that hadn’t been touched yet.

“We also had to spend a bit more to extend the campaign and replicate some of the things we couldn’t move, but the value of having the big NFL game as a lead-in was worth it,” she told Brief.

Fox has tried a few different sells to pitch the series to different target audiences, in an effort to go after a broader viewership than might typically watch a robot-centric thriller.

The network pushed the procedural angle for women 18-49, while men in the same range were pitched a light buddy cop show. Younger men were sold on its “epic” and “cool” factor, and the network reached out to hardcore sci-fi fans with a futuristic sell.

“We really tried to market the show in both a big, broad way and a niche way to appeal to everyone,” Ryan said. “Internally, we’ve been referring to the show as ‘TV’s first robromance,’ which seems to be sticking!”

Along the way, the tag line for the series was tweaked a bit from “Some cops are born. Others are made,” to “In 2048, every cop is issued the latest in technology: A partner”—the latter meant to emphasize the show’s buddy cop aspect.

Fox isn’t sticking to just on-air promos and sports audiences to sell the show. Sensing that “Almost Human” might play well on the big screen, Fox has placed the trailer in-theater ahead of “Ender’s Game,” “Last Vegas,” and the “Hunger Games” sequel.

And the network went so far as to recreate the show’s vision of 2048 in the middle of Herald Square in Manhattan with a live event they dubbed the ALMOST HUMANhattan Experience, featuring live teams of MX43s, some of the show’s futuristic cop cars, key sets from the storyline, and special chairs where fans could watch the trailer on iTheatre glasses.

“And of course, we had to have human recharging stations (free coffee!) and android recharging stations for fan’s devices throughout the experience,” Ryan added.

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