Apart from the prestige of winning for both clubs, the more immediate injection of cash would come in handy, says Emmet Malone

AS THE thousands of fans who have had to abandon the idea of following their favourite teams to Moscow next week have realised, just sitting in the stand at the Luzhniki Stadium requires an outlay that seems to involve telephone numbers.

For the money men at Chelsea and Manchester United, though, the numbers are highly enticing. Whichever club has its colours attached to the club game's most glittering prize at the end of Wednesday's game, will have earned upwards of €50 million in prize-money, television revenue and gate receipts from the competition. When sponsorship, increased merchandising revenues and future revenues from fans gained from the success are thrown into the mix, however, the potential value of victory in this one game alone could be anything from €75 million to €130 million.

The stakes would not be quite as high for clubs representing any of Europe's big leagues but English sides are uniquely well placed to capitalise on European success because of the level of international interest in the Premiership.

While the world's highest earning club is Spanish (Real Madrid) and the biggest growth in club revenues over the last year or so has been experienced in Germany, where the Bundesliga's leading sides benefited from the substantial infrastructural improvements - primarily better stadiums - made for the World Cup in 2006, England has more representatives than any other country (six) in the game's top 20 rich list.

The combined income of those 20 clubs has trebled in 10 years and the growth in England has outstripped other countries, not least because of soaring domestic television rights deals. The money paid by British broadcasters also helps to explain why English sides do so well out of the Champions League. When Porto, to take an extreme example, won the competition in 2004 they earned nearly €18 million, while United made almost half as much again despite getting knocked out in the round of 16, and Liverpool amassed nearly €30 million more when they succeeded the Portuguese as champions 12 months later.

This year, of course, both finalists are English and other factors will dictate who does best out of the final. After years of sustained success, United claim to have 333 million fans worldwide and count 139 million of those as their "core" support. A larger ground, and the fact they entered this year's Champions League as English title holders, mean the club will have made significantly more than their London rivals by getting this far.

Match-day revenues contributed around 40 per cent of United's €315 million 2006/07 revenues and European home games are disproportionately profitable. But it is the split of Champions League television revenue that most starkly favours each nation's championship-winning side from the previous season.

Last year, for instance, AC Milan topped the competition's list of earners, taking €39.5 million in direct payments from Uefa after beating Liverpool in Athens. But Chelsea took €18.8 million from the television rights pool compared to the Merseysiders' €12.4 million, so the Londoners made fractionally more overall than their rivals despite failing to make the final. This time around it is United who will benefit from the system.

And this year, the English sides will make substantially more, not only because Uefa estimates total revenues for the competition will rise to around €824 million - resulting in there being more money to share between the clubs - but also because the revenue obtained from European football's governing body is paid in Swiss Francs and that currency has gone up in value by 18 per cent against sterling over the last 12 months.

In advance of last year's decider, meanwhile, tournament sponsor Mastercard commissioned experts from 10 countries to assess the value of winning the final itself and the group settled on a sum of around €85 million.

This was arrived at by taking into consideration increased sponsorship, attendances, merchandising revenue, enhanced image and even greater player values over the long term. But some economists believe that even this figure fails to fully recognise the benefit to be derived in terms of the development of the club's fan base.

In this regard, Chelsea have much more to gain than their rivals next week. United will inevitably be keen to reinforce their status as a "global brand" but Roman Abramovich's club is still very much playing catch up and becoming champions of Europe would certainly help to close the gap.

A report by the Deloitte's Sport Business Group, put the club's revenue at €283 million, leaving them fourth in the world, behind Real Madrid, United and Barcelona, but the club can't boast anything like their rivals' support base abroad and have been working frantically to develop it in Russia, Asia and the United States.

"The real benefit (of winning the competition) is in raising the club's profile around the world," says Dan Jones of Deloitte. In that sense, victory on Wednesday could continue to pay dividends for decades to come.

The more immediate injection of cash provided by winning would come in handy at either club as well, though. Abramovich has spent more than €625 million on Chelsea and losses for the 12 months to June of last year alone were €92 million. That, however, is down from €175 million three years ago and if the club are to continue making any sort of meaningful strides towards their rather unlikely target of breaking even in 2010, then they could do with winning in Moscow.

On the face of it United are in far better shape. The club trumpeted an operating profit last year of almost €75 million, with commercial revenues up substantially on the back of deals with AIG and Nike worth roughly €17.5 million and €29 million per annum respectively.

Those figures plus the substantially increased gate receipts that have been achieved since the capacity of Old Trafford was increased to 76,000 (the figure at Chelsea is just 43,000) meant the percentage of turnover paid out in wages, a common measure of a club's health within the game, fell to a highly impressive 43.6 per cent.

All of that, though, tends to distract attention from a somewhat grimmer picture at Old Trafford where the manner in which Malcolm Glazer financed his takeover of the club - by effectively getting the club to borrow the purchase price - has resulted in borrowings of around €830 million and total debt (including, as of June 30th last, almost €75 million still due on players bought by Alex Ferguson in order to counter Chelsea's improvement) of almost €1 billion.

Around €50 million of the almost €100 million due in interest payments last year - some of the money has been borrowed at rates of 14 per cent per annum - was simply rolled over as is allowed under the terms of the deals until 2016 when, if it hasn't been refinanced it must be repaid. When all the financial stuff is factored in the club's loss for 2006/07 ran to just over €70 million.

For all of that, though, and regardless of who wins on Wednesday, both clubs are expected to keep on spending in their pursuit of success. The simple truth is, that at this stage of the game, neither can afford to countenance failure.