As fans of the Netflix docuseries America’s Sweethearts are now well aware, the job of an NFL cheerleader is much harder than it looks. Not only must these professional dancers train, rehearse, travel and recover like any other elite athlete, many have historically done so while balancing another full or part-time job, considering the money they make solely from cheering isn’t enough to pay the bills.
But how much—or how little—is that, really? Let’s take a look:
In 2014, The Atlantic reported three different per-game pay values for three different squads: $150 per game for the Cowboys, $100 for the Ravens and $75 for the Chargers. That article was then cited in a piece from PBS, which was later linked in a post for ESPN. ESPN’s report, also regarding low cheerleader compensation, surmised that the typical per-game pay for an NFL cheerleader was somewhere in the $75 to $150 range. Since then, many an outlet has run with this “$150 per game” value as a league-wide average or benchmark, though it is not clear whether that is still the case.
Luckily, we can use America’s Sweethearts and the Cowboys in particular to triangulate where cheerleader compensation stands in 2025, considering how the popularity of the series reinvigorated an ongoing fight regarding the pay disparity between the leagues’ cheerleaders and its biggest stars.
In Season 1 of the docuseries, which premiered in 2024 but was filmed in 2023, then-cheerleader Kat Puryear described her pay as akin to a substitute teacher or a “Chick-fil-A worker that works full-time.”
She later expanded on those comments in a TikTok, though she did not use exact numbers to do so. Per Puryear, Cowboys cheerleaders are paid an hourly rate for game days—which tend to run approximately 11 hours, give or take, and only for home contests—in addition to a flat-rate game day fee. The structure is the same for public appearances, which are voluntary, though longer-tenured dancers tend to have a higher flat rate. Practices, meanwhile, are paid hourly, and they usually run about 3-4 hours. “It’s like a full-time commitment, part-time pay,” Puryear, who retired after the 2023 season, concluded.
More specifically, one (anonymous) cheerleader who joined the team in 2021 told HuffPost last year that she was paid $12.50 per hour for practices and $400 per game. As for appearances, she said she earned $100 in her first year but that that value rose $100 every year after that. More recently, Jada McLean, a now-retired cheerleader featured prominently in Season 2 of America’s Sweethearts, told the New York Times in June that, in her fifth and final year in 2024, she earned “$15 an hour and $500 for each appearance.”
As revealed toward the end of that same season, however, the cheerleaders had successfully lobbied for what amounted to a 400% increase in pay moving forward. The starting and ending numbers were not revealed in the show, but, when speaking to the Times, McLean said the veteran cheerleaders could now make more than $75 an hour. The new contract also boasts changes around game day and appearance pay, though we don’t have those exact numbers. It also still does not provide health insurance.
And while this info pertains to just the Cowboys’ unit, perhaps the most famous of them all, that pre-increase number offers a great benchmark for what other dancers might have been or are currently making on lesser-known squads. It is also hopefully a bellwether of change to come, considering a raise at the top should increase the overall market rate for cheerleaders league-wide, as Daniel Kelly II, an associate dean and professor at the Tisch Institute for Global Sport at New York University, told the Times.
Do Cheerleaders Receive Any Additional Benefits?
Although it is not the same as money in the bank, Kelli Finglass, director of the Cowboys cheer squad, has worked to negotiate certain helpful perks for her dancers, like free spray tans and hair extensions. The team also has access to a Cowboys doctor and physical therapist to make up for the lack of health insurance. Whether this is the case for other squads is unclear.
Likely more helpful, however, is that the Cowboys cheerleaders are permitted to sign social media brand deals so long as they do not interfere with their jobs. Considering the exposure they’ve received from America’s Sweethearts, these partnerships probably go a long way in padding dancers’ income.
DCC increase aside, you might be wondering, “Surely, these franchises can afford to pay their cheerleaders more.” And the answer to that is: they definitely can based on how valuable they are.
As of August 2025, when Sportico released its annual NFL team valuation rankings, Dallas was far and away the most valuable team at $12.8 billion. Behind it are the Rams at $10.43 billion and the Giants at $10.25 billion. Least valuable are the Bengals, at $5.5 billion, but that is still an unfathomably large number and almost one billion more than the average NBA team at $4.6.
How Long Have NFL Cheerleaders Been Lobbying for a Pay Raise?
A long, long time.
But one notable instance of late came in 2014, when the Buffalo Jills—the Bills’ cheerleaders—had their squad basically disbanded when they attempted to fight for greater workplace protections. Lacy Thibodeaux-Fields, a former Oakland Raiders cheerleader, filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL that same year, alleging wage theft and gender discrimination, and both stories were highlighted in the 2019 documentary A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem.
In 2018, former DCC cheerleader Erica Wilkins sued the Cowboys for unfair pay, claiming in her suit that she made less than the team’s mascot. And by the fall of 2020, “10 of the NFL’s 26 teams had been slapped with wage theft, harassment, unsafe working conditions or discrimination suits,” per The Guardian. Yikes.
So while, yes, the 400% increase for the Dallas dancers is incredible, it is also long overdue—and didn’t come without a fight. We can only hope that, behind the scenes, the rest of the league is or has followed suit.
