Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Salary, Role & Gameday Impact
If you’ve watched America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, you’ve heard the number that reframed the whole conversation: 400%. That’s the reported pay increase the squad received heading into the 2025 season, and it turned a years-long fight over Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders salary into one of the biggest labor stories in sports entertainment. There’s an important qualification, though: the Cowboys organization has never released an official, itemized pay schedule. Every specific number in circulation, including the widely cited $75-an-hour figure, comes from cheerleader interviews and media reporting, not a confirmed team document.
That distinction matters throughout the salary discussion, because the Cowboys have not published a complete pay table and likely won’t anytime soon.
Quick answer: Following a reported 400% pay increase for the 2025 season, veteran Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were said to be earning upward of $75 an hour, compared with roughly $15 an hour the year before. The Cowboys organization has acknowledged the raise but has not published a complete, official pay table, so treat any specific current dollar figure as reported rather than confirmed.
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Salary: What Do They Actually Make?
What Was DCC Pay Before the 2025 Raise?
Reported Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders salary figures before 2025 varied depending on who was asked and when. Jada McLean, a five-year veteran who helped lead the pay push, told The New York Times that during her final season in 2024 she earned $15 an hour plus $500 per public appearance, with pay scaling up somewhat by seniority. Separately, NBC Sports Boston reported in 2022 that DCC members made between $15 and $20 an hour, roughly $500 per game, and about $75,000 a year in total compensation — a figure that likely reflects a smaller group of veterans doing heavy appearance work rather than a typical member’s take-home pay.
None of these numbers reflect a fixed annual salary. Rehearsal hours, game-day work, and outside appearances were paid on separate schedules, and several cheerleaders featured on the Netflix series held other jobs to cover rent — nurse Kelcey Wetterberg and florist-shop employee Reece Allman among them.
The 400% Pay Increase
The raise became public in the seventh episode of Season 2, when four-year veteran Megan McElaney told cameras the team’s advocacy had finally paid off, calling the 400% increase “life-changing.” Jada McLean and fellow veteran Armani Latimer had spent the prior season pushing internally for the change, consulting family members with legal backgrounds and meeting with the Cowboys’ HR and legal teams. Tad Carper, the Cowboys’ senior vice president of communications, told TIME the organization was “pleased” the cheerleaders were happy with the outcome — but the team did not disclose specific rates.
Reporting since the announcement has centered on that $75-per-hour figure for veterans. Some outlets have gone a step further and estimated a per-game rate near $2,500 by extrapolating from the hourly number. That’s a calculation by journalists, not a disclosure from the Cowboys, so it’s more accurate to describe current Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders salary levels as “reported to be higher, with no official total confirmed” than to treat any single figure as final.
What is the current Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders salary? Based on cheerleader interviews and reporting from outlets including The New York Times and TIME, veteran members were said to be earning more than $75 an hour after the 2025 raise, up from about $15 an hour previously. As of the 2026 season, the Cowboys still have not released an official compensation table, so these figures remain the best publicly available estimates rather than confirmed numbers.
Why Did Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Get a 400% Raise?
Years of Advocacy Behind the Headline
The 2025 increase followed years of internal pushback over pay, not a single dramatic negotiation. Executive vice president and chief brand officer Charlotte Jones had long framed the cheerleading role around prestige rather than compensation — a framing the show’s producers noted doesn’t get applied to the players earning eight-figure contracts on the same field. McLean and Latimer spent much of the 2024 season building a case for change, and by the middle of Season 2’s timeline, cheerleaders were openly discussing the toll of working multiple jobs just to stay on the squad.
How Netflix Changed the Leverage, Not the Facts
America’s Sweethearts didn’t invent the pay dispute — the 2018 Erica Wilkins lawsuit predates the show by six years. What the series did was put the gap between fame and paycheck in front of a mainstream audience for the first time. McLean told TIME the show’s existence played a real role in speeding up the raise, since viewers reacting publicly gave cheerleaders more room to speak up internally. Netflix amplified an existing fight; it didn’t start one.
From the 2018 Lawsuit to Today’s Pay Structure
What Happened in the Erica Wilkins Case?
In 2018, former cheerleader Erica Wilkins sued the Cowboys in federal court, alleging the team violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Equal Pay Act. Her filing claimed she was paid around $8 an hour and a flat $200 per game, and that the team’s mascot, Rowdy, earned roughly $25 an hour and about $65,000 a year for comparable public-facing work. The case settled out of court in 2019. Per TIME’s reporting on the settlement terms, hourly pay rose from $8 to $12, and game-day pay doubled from $200 to $400.
Why the Lawsuit Still Matters to the Salary Story
The 2025 raise arrived years after that 2018 lawsuit and 2019 settlement had already reshaped DCC compensation once. Framing the current Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders salary debate as something Netflix discovered out of nowhere skips the fact that cheerleaders and their attorneys had already forced one significant pay increase before a single episode aired.
Reported figures vary by season, seniority, and pay category, so the timeline below should be read as a record of what’s been reported over time, not a standardized DCC pay scale.
DCC Pay at a Glance
| Period | Reported hourly rate | Reported game-day pay | Source status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 2018 | ~$8/hour | ~$200/game | Wilkins lawsuit allegation |
| 2019 settlement | $12/hour | $400/game | Reported settlement terms (TIME) |
| 2022 | $15–$20/hour | ~$500/game | NBC Sports Boston report |
| 2024 (McLean, final season) | $15/hour | $500/appearance | New York Times interview |
| 2025 (post-raise) | “More than $75/hour” for veterans | Not officially disclosed | Cheerleader interviews, multiple outlets |
No line in this table is an official Cowboys pay stub. Every figure traces back to a lawsuit filing, a settlement report, or a cheerleader’s own account to a reporter — which is why no outlet, including this one, can hand you a single definitive current number.
What Does a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Actually Do?
A Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader is a professional performer and brand representative whose responsibilities go well past sideline dancing on Sundays. The role includes multiple weekly rehearsals, conditioning standards, choreography review, community and charity appearances, sponsor events, and — per the official DCC rules — a set pay schedule that separately covers rehearsals, home games, promotional appearances, and shows.
Director Greg Whiteley has said he assumed the job was full-time before filming the docuseries and was surprised by how much unpaid, off-camera work sat underneath the on-field performance. Fifth-year veteran Kleine Powell was shown working four separate jobs during the 2024 season just to stay financially afloat while cheerleading. That gap between visible glamour and invisible labor is exactly what pulled Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders salary into a mainstream conversation that had nothing to do with football scores.
How Competitive Is It to Become a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader?
According to the team’s official audition rules, candidates must be at least 18 years old at the time of preliminary auditions. Selection runs through preliminary auditions, a finals round, and a training-camp stage that tests technical dance ability, stage presence, conditioning, and interview skills. Once on the roster, members commit to two to five mandatory rehearsals a week before the season starts, plus a fixed in-season schedule — commitments the team’s own rules describe as non-negotiable for anyone who can’t attend consistently.
What separates this from a typical cheer squad tryout is scale: a 36-person roster represents one of the most recognized cheerleading brands in the country, and being cut doesn’t require a scandal — even longtime veterans have to re-audition every year alongside first-time rookies.
How Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Influence Gameday
The DCC Role in Cowboys Gameday Atmosphere
At AT&T Stadium, DCC performances are woven into pregame activities, in-game entertainment, and halftime programming rather than functioning as a standalone act. Head choreographer Judy Trammell builds routines around stadium sound and lighting cues, which is part of why a Cowboys home game reads more like a produced show than a straightforward broadcast once the cheerleaders take the field.
From Sideline Performance to Cowboys Fan Culture
DCC’s blue-and-white visual identity sits naturally within the broader color story associated with Cowboys fandom, one that also shows up in tailgate banners, fan social posts, and game-day apparel around Arlington. For readers who want the fuller backstory on how that identity took shape alongside the franchise itself, our Dallas Cowboys history and heritage guide traces the team’s evolution from its 1960 founding through the “America’s Team” era.
How DCC Shapes Gameday Fashion
That visual identity bleeds directly into what fans wear to the stadium — vintage-style spirit tees, retro game-day jackets, and the kind of comfortable layers built for a long Texas afternoon rather than a runway. We at TeeMam see that overlap between sideline performance and fan apparel as part of a broader shift in how football culture gets expressed through what people wear, not just what they watch.
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders as a Cultural Brand
The Uniform as a Cultural Symbol
The DCC uniform, with its western-inspired styling, star detailing, and signature boots, has stayed recognizable for decades — one of the few sports uniforms that reads as timeless rather than dated across eras of the show.
DCC Beyond the NFL Sidelines
The squad’s reach now extends into reality television, national morning-show appearances, youth cheer camps, and a fan culture where individual members build public profiles well outside game day. That shift predates the Netflix era — the squad’s predecessor show, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team, ran on CMT for sixteen seasons — but America’s Sweethearts accelerated it dramatically, debuting in the global Top 10 in dozens of countries.
How America’s Sweethearts Changed the DCC Conversation
What the Netflix Series Revealed About DCC Life
Beyond the pay figures, the series showed training intensity, roster competition, and the financial strain of the job in a way earlier press coverage never captured. Season 3, which began streaming on Netflix on June 16, 2026, follows the 2025–26 squad through auditions, training camp, and the season under the new pay structure — giving audiences a closer look at how the restructured pay actually played out day to day.
Did Netflix Pay the Cheerleaders?
There’s no public breakdown of individual documentary payments separate from a cheerleader’s regular DCC contract. Appearing in the series and earning a DCC salary are two different arrangements, and no outlet has confirmed a specific per-cheerleader Netflix rate. What is confirmed is that cheerleaders are now permitted more latitude around social-media partnerships and sponsored content, which choreographer Judy Trammell has described as a shift from the program’s earlier, more restrictive stance. Readers curious about how the show itself came together can dig into our America’s Sweethearts documentary story for the full production timeline.
What Does DCC Gameday Mean for Fans Visiting AT&T Stadium?
AT&T Stadium seats 80,000 and can expand well beyond that with standing-room configurations, making DCC’s stadium-scale choreography a genuine logistical undertaking rather than a simple sideline routine. For anyone planning a first visit to Arlington, the cheerleaders are one part of a bigger entertainment package that starts before kickoff and runs through the final whistle. Our AT&T Stadium visitor experience guide walks through what to expect from arrival to the last snap.
How Does DCC Pay Compare With Other NFL Cheerleading Squads?
Direct comparisons across teams are harder than they look, because franchises structure compensation differently — some rely on flat per-game fees, others on hourly rates plus stipends, and disclosure practices vary widely across the league. Older league-wide reporting placed typical NFL cheerleader per-game pay somewhere in the $75-to-$150 range, well below where DCC reportedly sits after the 2025 raise. Without standardized league-wide data, however, those comparisons remain difficult to verify, and any clean ranking table would be built on incomplete figures.
What the 2025 Pay Increase Changed
The DCC story shows how visibility and compensation can move at very different speeds. DCC is one of the world’s most recognizable cheerleading brands and still spent years below a living wage by most measures. What moved the number wasn’t visibility alone; it was sustained internal advocacy from specific cheerleaders, combined with a media platform large enough that the organization faced sustained public pressure. The 2025 increase marked a major change, but the absence of a published pay schedule still makes exact current compensation difficult to verify.
Common Questions About Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Pay and Work
How Much Do Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Make Per Game?
Reported figures have ranged from $400 per game under the 2019 settlement to some media estimates near $2,500 per game after the 2025 raise, based on extrapolating the reported hourly rate. Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders salary has never been published as one universal per-game number, so these remain outside estimates rather than club-confirmed rates.
Did Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Get a 400% Raise?
Yes. Multiple cheerleaders confirmed the increase on camera during Season 2 of America’s Sweethearts, and the Cowboys organization acknowledged the raise to reporters, though without releasing specific dollar figures.
Do Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Have Other Jobs?
Historically, yes. Low pay pushed many members into full-time work in fields like nursing and retail alongside their DCC schedule, a pattern documented across multiple seasons of the show. Whether that pattern has eased since the 2025 raise hasn’t been independently confirmed.
Do Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Get Paid for Netflix?
There’s no confirmed public figure for individual documentary payments separate from regular DCC compensation.
Is Being a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader a Full-Time Job?
It behaves like one in hours — rehearsals, games, appearances, and conditioning — but has historically been structured more like part-time or contract work, without benefits such as health insurance, according to recent reporting.
How Do You Become a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader?
Candidates must be at least 18 at preliminary auditions and go through a multi-stage process testing dance technique, performance quality, and interviews, followed by a competitive training camp for the roughly 36 roster spots. Official audition windows and requirements are announced through the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders organization each year.
The Bigger Picture
The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders salary story is really two stories moving together: a labor fight that started with a 2018 lawsuit and reached a real turning point in 2025, and a cultural one, where the same women driving that fight also shape what game day looks and feels like for tens of thousands of fans every week. Treat any specific dollar figure you read, including the ones in this article, as reported rather than officially confirmed until the Cowboys organization publishes a full pay schedule of its own.
Sources
- How the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Got a 400% Pay Raise — TIME
- The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Get a 400 Percent Pay Raise — The New York Times
- Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders get 400% pay raise — ABC News
- Former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Suing Team In Fair Pay Dispute — CBS News Texas
- Lawsuit alleges Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders paid less than mascot — ESPN
- Auditions Rules – Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders — Official DCC site
- ‘America’s Sweethearts’ Season 3 Sets June 2026 Release — Variety
- Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders’ 400% raise is a reminder of how little female athletes get paid — CBC News
Hi, I’m Olivia Bennett, a fashion and lifestyle writer at TeeMam with 6 years of experience creating content about fashion, outfits, and lifestyle trends. I enjoy sharing practical style ideas for everyday wear, game days, holidays, and special occasions, helping readers find looks that feel comfortable, fun, and uniquely their own.
