How Much Is a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Actually Worth?
In a tense scene during the second season of the Netflix hit America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, members of the squad were huddled on a Zoom call discussing a disappointing meeting with management about their latest contract. “We do hold value, and what are we willing to do to show them that we know our value?” fifth-year veteran and squad leader Jada Mclean asked the group as they considered staging a walkout at their next practice. At the time, Mclean, who has since retired from the DCC, was making $15 an hour, without health insurance, supplementing her cheerleading salary by working as an aesthetician’s assistant at a dermatologist’s office.
By the end of the Emmy-nominated show’s second season, which premiered June 18, the women secured a 400 percent raise for veterans to $75 an hour, a rare win in what has been a decades-long fight for higher wages and more respect in the field of professional cheerleading. It’s a story arc that pushed the reality show out of the realm of spray tans and kick lines and into deeper themes about the economic worth of the DCC squad’s own elite athletes, many of whom end up needing hip replacements before they turn 30 from years of strenuous dance routines, and work second and third jobs while cheering. The storyline also raised an interesting question: If the Dallas Cowboys are the most valuable franchise in sports, worth $12.8 billion in 2025, according to Sportico, how much of that value derives from their globally recognized and increasingly popular cheerleading squad?
It’s a tricky number to nail down, but there are some ways to tally what DCC brings to the larger Cowboys franchise. Since June 20, 2024, when America’s Sweethearts premiered, the cheerleaders have provided the Cowboys with $50,207,813 in what is known as equivalent brand value, according to Eric Smallwood, president of Apex Marketing Group. This number accounts for the exposure they have garnered the team via their Netflix show as well as the regular promotional appearances they’ve made at high-profile events, including the Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Mike Tyson/Jake Paul boxing match, and the attention they get in the press and on social media. Smallwood calculated the number by determining what it would cost the Cowboys to actually buy all of that media for the team.
That $50 million doesn’t include the merch, like a DCC-branded cheer dress for infants ($39.99), bedazzled boot earrings ($44) or a pink hoodie ($85) that fans can buy. Nor does it account for what may be the most valuable thing the cheerleaders bring home to America’s Team: viewers, often female, who previously didn’t pay much attention to football.
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America’s Sweethearts is part of the growing phenomenon of so-called “shoulder programming,” in which story-driven shows like the British Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive and the Ryan Reynolds-Rob McElhenney (who now goes by Rob Mac) FX show Welcome to Wrexham become viewers’ gateway to a sport. “One of the reasons the Cowboys are always at the top [in value] is because they do so well at expanding their brand,” says Courtney Brunious, who teaches sports business at USC. “The cheerleaders are brand ambassadors for them. They create a broader footprint for the Cowboys to reach new people.”
The Cowboys must be happy with their cheerleaders’ Netflix impact because the team and their larger-than-life owner, Jerry Jones, are the subject of another Netflix series that premiered Aug. 19, America’s Team, the Gambler and His Cowboys, which is focused on Jones’ 1989 acquisition of the franchise and its return to glory during the ’90s.
It makes sense that the team is taking a page from its cheer squad. The year Mclean was making $15 an hour, the Cowboys’ quarterback, Dak Prescott, made $60 million. And while DCC had the No. 1 show on the largest streaming service in the world, the Cowboys ended their season with a 7-10 record, missing the playoffs.
This story appeared in the Aug. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
