Not all sports drinks are created equal, but it doesn't seem to matter much, at least according to this article. The original Gatorade contained sodium, potassium, and glucose, and even though sports drinks essentially contain the same thing 45+ years later, the concentrations of each differ. The key seems to be creating an isotonic solution (i.e., one where the dissolved particles in the drink equals that of the blood) as these are theoretically absorbed more rapidly. However, many of the traditional sports drinks err on the side of hypertonicity (greater concentration of dissolved particles compared to blood) because the addition of slightly more carbohydrates yielded performance benefits. However, the increasingly popular "low sugar" sports drinks are actually slightly hypotonic (lower concentration of dissolved particles compared to blood). With regards to performance, all of the sports drinks performed better than water in terms of hydration and energy levels, but there were no significant differences between the three. People did find the hyper/hypotonic solutions slightly more agreeable (at least this is the way I read it), so you might have to play around with the proper sports drink : water ratio to find what mix works best for you.
Interesting Fact: drinking sports drinks before/during/after a workout helps to fight off colds.
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