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Dallas Cheerleaders Finally Get the Pay Raise They Deserve
Can you believe that a cheerleader can earn only around $75 to $150 per football game, after all the training for high kicks, split jumps, and formations practices?
The second season of the Netflix documentary series “America’s Sweethearts” covers the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, the cheer team for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The documentary reveals that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders will receive a pay raise of around 400 percent for the 2025 season. Jada McLean, a former cheerleader on the team described this raise in an interview with The New York Times, as “a drastic change.” This is a huge increase in a career known for its low pay.
The pay raise is announced in Episode 7 of the series, which began streaming last Wednesday. It captures a whole year of hard work for a higher pay that drew a great deal of attention in 2018 when former cheerleader Erica Wilkins sued the team for unfair pay. She claimed that she received about $7 per hour with no overtime pay and around $200 per game. The total added being less than the annual pay for the team’s mascot, Rowdy. Her case was settled out of court in 2019. Since then, the hourly pay for the cheerleaders remained the same.
Ms. McLean told The New York Times that in 2024, her fifth year with the team, she had made $15 an hour and $500 for each game. With the pay raise, she said that veteran cheerleaders – cheerleaders who had been on the team for at least one previous season – are now making more than $75 an hour.
The cheerleading squad erupted in popularity with the release of the first season of “America’s Sweethearts” last summer, which quickly became one of Netflix’s top ten shows.
In the past week, the cheerleaders got a 400 percent pay raise from around $15 an hour to $75 an hour. This marks a change in the compensation standards for professional female artists.
References:
https://pagesix.com/2025/06/23/entertainment/how-much-do-dallas-cowboys-cheerleaders-make-breaking-down-their-400-percent-salary-increase/
https://variety.com/2025/tv/features/dallas-cowboys-cheerleaders-pay-raise-dcc-vet-jada-explains-1236439279/

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