As head of legal at Fifa Marketing, Tom Houseman led one of the world’s largest-ever rights protection programmes at the World Cup last year.

With a cumulative audience of around 30 billion watching, Houseman coordinated efforts to prevent trademark infringement, illegal tickets sales and ambush marketing eroding goodwill with the event’s 15 official sponsors.

The task was enormous. Fifa logged 2,500 violations of its IP during its World Cup 2006 rights protection programme, keeping Houseman and his 12-lawyer team busy.

Houseman proved himself to be up to the job and was aided by his ability to make tough decisions. This included publicly forcing Dutch fans to remove bright-orange lederhosen branded by a rival brewery to a sponsor.