This special session assembles scholars from various countries with keen interests in the marketing and societal dynamics of the world’s most popular sporting spectacle, the FIFA World Cup. It builds on a stream of research in, for example, ethology (e.g., Morris 1981) economics (e.g., Kuper and Szymanski 2014) consumer behavior (e.g., Shultz 1998; Tavassoli, Shultz and Fitzimons 1995), marketing (e.g., Shultz et al. 2010) and macromarketing (Shultz and Burgess 2011) that explores the systemic complexities of this enormous, global extravaganza and the extent to which it benefits and/or harms myriad players, fans, local and global consumers, companies, governments, societies and the environment.