As we go to press, Real Madrid are about to kick off at the Bernabeu while in Paris, PSG are set to start against Chelsea in the first leg of this season’s Champions League quarter final ties.

The three teams mentioned above are almost certain to be among the names of next year’s quarter-finalists and despite unexpectedly drawing their matches on Tuesday, both Barcelona and Bayern Munich, are still considered favourites to be contesting a tie in the last eight in April 2015.

Such is the incredible value of Champions League football to Europe’s ‘top’ teams, that even reaching the quarter final stage is worth a fortune. Juventus, eliminated at this point last season, earned a reported €65.3 million (£56.3 million) from the tournament.

In addition to the five teams above identified as Champions League certainties, there’s probably another 6-8, including Juventus, Monaco and Napoli who are fair bets to compete for the enormous amounts of money on offer next season.

You could probably guess the other four or five.

Following its introduction in 1992, the Champions League quickly reduced Europe’s domestic leagues to glorified feeder competitions where ‘finishing fourth’ became a major footballing achievement. And, as money became an even more influential factor in determining success, both domestic competition, as well as the tournament itself have become predictable affairs. In fact, with domestic cup competitions such as the FA Cup marginalised, it could be reasonably argued that entry to UEFA’s world of untold riches has become the raison d’etre for the continent’s richest football clubs.

The team finishing fourth in this season’s Premier League will earn a minimum of £90.5 million, whereas the basic fee for playing in the Champions League is €8.6 million. Win a couple of matches, draw another two and UEFA send a cheque for €11.6 million (£10 million). Naturally, the level of reimbursement grows larger the further a club progresses in the competition, widening the financial gulf between those performing in the Champions League and their domestic counterparts unable to benefit from UEFA’s largesse. In short, the Champions League perpetuates the process whereby the rich get richer.

For years, rugby union administrators and club owners have looked upon elite football club’s relentless pursuit of broadcast and sponsorship gold with a mixture of disdain and barely concealed envy. Tomorrow night, the sport stages its own version of high-profile, European quarter finals as the Heineken Cup takes centre stage. Though the tournament is currently football’s much poorer European cousin, this status is set to change following the introduction of rugby’s European Champions Cup from next season.

Money has been the sole driving force behind the creation of this new competition – bigger clubs want more of it, so it has not taken rugby’s burgeoning elite long to ape their footballing cousins.

Jettisoning the Dublin-based European Rugby Cup Limited, the organisation responsible for running the Heineken Cup and rejecting the idea of having it administered by a Six Nations committee, the new tournament will be run by a company based in that well-known rugby hotbed of Switzerland.

In a further example of rugby copying football’s marketing acumen, Heineken, understood to be keen to extend their commercial involvement, have been told that if they are to remain involved, they must share their title sponsorship mantle with three or four others. Jim Hardie, managing director of Apex Sport, believes that as the intention is to turn the new European rugby championship into “the most lucrative in world rugby”, the likelihood is it will be sponsored by at least four leading consumer brands.

“The Heineken Cup has been an excellent, income-producing competition for rugby clubs, so this change is driven by an understandable commercial desire to generate more,” said Mr Hardie, who added: “I would expect sponsorship income to double in the short term, while broadcast revenue will increase dramatically too.”

Rugby’s administrators have always been a little uncertain of their game’s true commercial worth, particularly at club level. However, given the continued popularity of the Six Nations Championship, the autumn internationals, the Rugby World Cup and the Heineken Cup itself, those involved in what could prove a pivotal change in the game believe the opportunity to significantly increase the amount of money it yields is upon us.

Not only will the commercial value of rugby’s new competition soar, it will also be ‘streamlined’, a euphemism for saying the considerably larger pot of European cash will go to a smaller number of clubs. Only 20, not 24, clubs will compete from next season.

At present, the sums of money generated by rugby’s European competitions pale when compared to football. This season’s competitions have generated around £45 million and while that might appear modest, rugby has grown used to its ‘product value’ rising each year. Ten years ago, the figure was less than £30 million.

Next season’s income, split equally between six teams from the Aviva Premiership, another six from ance’s Top14 and seven from the RaboDirect Pro 12, will rise by at least 25 per cent. This means that the amount of money distributed to English clubs will rise from £9 million to almost £17 million, a sum expected to at least double within four years.

Given that most Premiership rugby clubs continue to report annual losses, the hope is that the injection of additional funding will alleviate this situation.

However, ambitious commercial considerations, likely to tempt some clubs to borrow against the promise of future riches, coupled with a sideways glance at what has happened in the Premier League, a competition literally awash with cash and loss-making entities, suggests otherwise.

The long-term involvement of BT Sport and Sky Sports, who reached a breakthrough agreement to screen matches involving English clubs, is central to the success of rugby’s new European championship. Broadcast revenues are widely expected to increase by at least 50 percent and to subsequently double over the next three years.

Yet it is the wider involvement of consumer brands that has some club owners salivating.

“There’s no limit on the amount of sponsorship categories the new competition could create,” says Jim Hardie, “but if its marketing people are smart, they’ll attempt to emulate the Champions League model and effectively get the incoming brands to do the marketing for them.

“Their aim will be to have possibly half a dozen blue chip companies, not just one, constantly marketing the tournament on their behalf. It’s a model the Champions League has perfected and, as we know, it’s extremely successful.”

Successful it almost certainly will be, though many amongst rugby’s army of loyal followers believe the game’s soul might be compromised in the singular pursuit of broadcast income and the sponsorship dollar, a model capable of turning elite rugby into a predictable replica of top-flight European football.