With a culmulative audience of over 30 billion, the World Cup attracts a lot of sponsorship. The final game yesterday attracted over 1 billion viewers! (compare this to America's annual Super Bowl which has only 50 -100 million viewers).

So, I was really curious about how sports brands choose which teams to sponsor. I was also a bit bored, so I altered the original and designed this visual of which sports brands were involved. Congratulations, Puma, for, err, winning the World Cup!

hehe... Interestingly, I would say the true winner is Adidas, as they have been represented the most throughout. And their association with the host nation's suprisingly successful team as well as on the ball in every game, certainly helped. And I bet Nike is now rueing their decision to link their ad campaigns solely to Brazil, who were ejected in the quarterfinals.

With the next World Cup to be held in South Africa, Puma's sponsorship of all five African nations appears to be quite "forward-looking".