As soon as the BBC announced their star studded judging panel for The Voice, we knew that they were serious about making the show a huge one.

Today our suspicions have been backed up by reports that the publicly funded channel have shelled out a whopping £22 million to make sure that they continue to reign supreme in their ratings battle with ITV.

Insiders say that bosses shelled out the big bucks, as they are determined that the new talent show will follow in the footsteps of Strictly Come Dancing and wipe the floor with Britain’s Got Talent, in the way Strictly did with X Factor in 2011.

As well as splurging millions of pounds on landing the rights to the format of the originally American series, bosses have also invested a large amount of cash in fees for their celebrity judges, who include international pop superstar, Black Eyed Peas singer Will.i.am, currently UK number one single holder Jessie J, Welsh singing legend Tom Jones and The Script frontman Danny O’Donaghue.

The Voice is being sold as a more credible show than Simon Cowell’s The X Factor, which fans generally concede is based more on personality than talent, as the judges won’t see their auditionees or know any of their back story before hearing the hopefuls sing. Contestants will get through their initial auditions based on their vocal skills alone.

But Simon Cowell is no push over and it has become clear in recent weeks, that he is going to put up quite a fight, in a bid to retain his audience.

He recently admitted that he is furious with BBC bosses, for once again making people choose between their rival shows each weekend and insists that he will up his game in response.

For a start Simon has revamped his judging panel with some well known household names. Gone is David Hasselhoff and Michael McIntyre and thankfully, Cowell resisted the urge to replace one of them with his best pal Louis Walsh. Instead the TV boss brought on comedy star of the moment David Walliams and poached singer and former reality TV winner Alesha Dixon from BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing.

He also opted to return to the show himself on a full time basis, after missing all the nationwide auditions for last year’s series.

Can he compete? Can Britain’s Got Talent hold on to it’s huge ratings and TV schedule dominance when it returns in April? Cowell has claimed that he thinks they can hit a high of twenty million viewers by the end of the 2012 series, but we want to know what you think.

Which show will you be tuning into and which do you think will win the ratings war? Leave your comments below.

Keep up with all the latest The Voice news and gossip here.