You have $4m to spend. Who are your new The Voice judges?

As soon as it became clear what a massive hit The Voice was in Australia, it became clear that the judges were in a sensational position to negotiate a massive pay rise for season 2.

With no confirmation of any of the judges from 2012 for the 2013 season of the hit show, you can bet there are some tense conversations between agents for Delta, Seal, Joel & Keith and Channel 9. Would you like some extra zeros on the end of that number?

It’s thought the judges budget was around $4m in total with the three international stars each receiving a bit more than Delta. And there are now reports that Keith Urban alone has been offered US$4m to be a judge on American Idol. Nice work if you can get it – which he clearly can.

So today here at Mamamia, we’ve decided to play a game. A ‘fantasy football league’ type game, if you will…but with less football. And less, you know, boring.

The challenge:

You have been given the penultimate power – and an appropriately and obscenely large budget – to pick the judging panel for Season 2 of The Voice.

The rules:

We love rules. So don’t go thinking you could just willy nilly pluck some names out of the air. Oh no, no, no.

1.  4 chairs = 4 positions on your dream team. No more. No less. No namby-pamby ‘I can’t decide’. The judges don’t get to do that. They’re decisive. They make the cuts. They pick the best. And so will you.

2.  Be realistic. Your dream team has to physically be able to do it. So John Lennon and Whitney Houston are (devastatingly) not an option.

3. Your picks have to be within the realm of possibility. Justin Bieber just turned down $25 million for American Idol. You don’t have that kind of money. That’s just crazy talk. And you can’t pick four superstars who would never deign to be on a reality television show. Madonna and Lady Gaga are unlikely contenders. Restraint is critical in this game.

4. Your budget has to cover ALL of your judges. So if you’re paying Taylor Swift then that doesn’t leave much room for catering, let alone 3 other awesome judges. Remember Australians tend to be a little cheaper and anyone who is in great need of some comeback publicity will generally be a bargain.

To start you off, we’ve picked our office dream team (and given our reasoning).

1. Cyndi Lauper (she’s a superstar, she’d bring some old-school cred and she’s just a tad cray-cray so she’d be awesome for some off-the-wall comments to keep it entertaining)

2. John Farnham (we like a little bit of Aussie flava, he’d keep us well within budget and the original Voice could definitely use The Voice to launch comeback tour number 501.)

3. Michael Buble (you need a bit of a swoon factor and well, just because we haven’t met him yet, doesn’t mean we aren’t 100% sure he would be PERFECT for the job. He’d also be good at coaching the young, cute boy band types. And his sense of humour is deadset Australian – a lot like Joel Madden)

4. Lilly Allen (she’s a mum, she’s rad and we think she’d take the nurturing role on that you need in a judging panel).

Here are some memories of the first season of The Voice, just to get you in the mood…