This summer’s men’s World Cup will be a tournament of firsts. It’s the first to be hosted across three nations, the first with an expanded 48 teams, the first with a whopping 104 matches, and the first with 16 host cities.

In short, the tournament, which starts on 11 June, will redefine the scale of what was already the world’s most-watched sporting event. And the football extravaganza is a dream come true for food and drink marketers.

“What sport does better than anything else is create shared emotion at scale,” says Laura Owen, COO at full-service sports agency Mongoose. “A World Cup partnership can give a brand reach, but more importantly, it gives meaning, because people care deeply, live in the moment and remember how brands showed up.”