If the Netflix docuseries America’s Sweethearts taught us anything, it’s that NFL cheerleading is far from a hobby. These women train like athletes: rehearsing, traveling, recovering, and many juggle part-time jobs on the side. So the obvious question: how much do they actually make in a season? The short answer: there’s no single figure.

Pay varies wildly by team, experience, hours logged, and what counts as season work. The show suggests a veteran can earn roughly $75 an hour, but that’s only one data point in a much larger range, considering this number is only related to the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders (DCC). In other words, cheerleader pay is a patchwork. And to understand it properly, we need to break it piece by piece.

NFL cheerleaders’ paychecks as per historical basis

Since there’s no single, league-wide salary for NFL cheerleaders (every team pays differently), the best way to understand the numbers is to start with the history. Back in 2014, The Atlantic reported that cheerleaders were earning about $150 per game with the Cowboys, $100 per game with the Baltimore Ravens, and $75 per game with the Los Angeles Chargers. ESPN later backed that up, saying most squads fell somewhere in the $75–$150 per game range.

And since then, $150 per game has become an average benchmark for every team. Is it still in the running or not? No one has a clue. But that info is a decade old. More recent data from ZipRecruiter paints a much bigger picture. Annual cheerleader salaries can go as high as $87,000 or as low as $20,500, with most landing between $35,000 (25th percentile) and $49,000 (75th percentile). Besides, the top earners (90th percentile) see around $75,000 a year across the U.S.

Still, those are broad estimates. The clearest, most up-to-date insight actually comes from Netflix’s America’s Sweethearts, which pulls back the curtain on what Cowboys cheerleaders really make today, and how their pay structure works in the modern NFL.

How much does the DCC make annually?

The Cowboys are the NFL’s most valuable franchise, and there’s no debate there. But the Netflix series makes one thing very clear: the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders still weren’t being paid like athletes. Former DCC member Kat Puryear broke it down in the show: cheerleaders earn hourly pay on game days (which can run about 11 hours), plus a flat game-day fee.

Appearances are optional but come with a set rate, and practices (usually 3-4 hours) are also paid. But a true full-time salary? They were nowhere close. We also got real numbers from individual cheerleaders. One anonymous member who joined in 2021 said she earned $12.50 per hour for practices, $400 per game, and $100 for appearances, with the appearance rate climbing by $100 each year.

Another cheerleader, Jada McLean, shared that by her fifth year in 2024, she was making $15 an hour and $500 per appearance. Even with all that work, the paycheck still didn’t match the workload. But the cheerleaders didn’t just accept it. They pushed for change. And they got it. By the end of America’s Sweethearts Season 2, the DCC had negotiated a massive 400% pay increase.

The show didn’t reveal the exact breakdown, but veteran cheerleaders reportedly now earn over $75 an hour, with higher game-day and appearance fees as well. This raise applies only to the Cowboys for now. But it has set a new standard. If the most iconic cheerleading squad in the NFL is getting a major pay bump, it puts pressure on the rest of the league to step up, too.