If the game of baseball flourished on the field, it seemed that the occupants of the front offices, where baseball was big business, had to scramble to save the game's vitality. Attendance declined steadily during the first half of the decade as television transformed spectators from bleacher bums into couch potatoes. At the beginning of the decade 25 percent of team revenues was from broadcast licenses; by the end of the decade the total was 30 percent. Although ticket prices averaged from two dollars to three dollars in the 1960s, fans increasingly found it more convenient to watch games on television than to go to the park. Still, the twenty teams in major-league baseball attracted 22.4 million paying fans to the ballpark in 1965, setting a per-club attendance record. The 150 or so minor-league teams drew less than half that number.
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