The first-ever survey of World Cup viewing habits among Africans by Geopoll, a pollster that uses text messages to survey developing nations, has shown that more than 25 million people five African countries watched the Nigeria vs Iran match making it the most watched game at the tournament so far.

AFP reported that the survey showed that over 17.5 million Nigerian adults or 20 percent of the west African country adult population watched the game.

Geopoll’s analysis of viewers represent nearly 300 million people in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda, providing a first glimpse of how many African fans are tuning into the World Cup.

The pollster however said time difference of when the games are played in Brazil had  affected viewership of some key Africa teams matches. Some about 3.5 million Ghanaians were able to watch the tournament curtain-raiser between Brazil and Croatia, while 2.4 million saw Ghana’s own tie against the United States. GeoPoll said the drop could possibly be explained by the later 10:00 pm (2200 GMT) kick-off.

Both Nigeria and Ghana have had consistently high percentages of their adult population watching the games — an average of 14 percent for Ghana and 10 percent for Nigeria, according to the survey. On average, 2.2 million Ghanaians tuned in to every hour of play during the first five days.

These figures were however much lower than viewing trends in many developed countries including the United States, where 15.9 million viewers watched their team beat Ghana, according to overnight Nielsen ratings.

This can be easily explained by the fewer number of African households that own a television set. Global statistics curator Nationmaster estimates that less than quarter of African families own a set, compared to over 98 percent of American families.