Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders to receive significant raise during 2025 season

The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are receiving a 400% pay increase, one member of the squad revealed during the second season of the Netflix series “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.”

“We’re pleased, as you’ll see in the series, that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were happy with the outcome,” the Cowboys said in a statement to ABC.

The increase comes after years of members fighting for pay increases. The last time the cheerleaders earned a significant pay increase was after they settled a lawsuit in 2019 to double their pay from before. Now, they’ll be getting paid four times more than they were previously for the 2025 season.

“Our efforts were heard and they wanted to give us a raise,” Megan McElaney, who has been on the Cowboys cheerleading squad for four seasons, said on the show. “And we ended up getting a 400% increase, which is like, life-changing.”

Notably, Jada McLean, a former Cowboys cheerleader, told the New York Times that she was previously making $15 per hour and $500 for each game. She predicted that the pay increase could see some of the long-standing members of the squad made up to $75 per hour moving forward.

A downside to this, cheerleaders will still be considered part-time employees in the Cowboys organization, meaning they will not have access to team doctors. Their contracts also do not include health insurance.

Still, the major pay increase is a huge win for the Cowboys cheerleaders in their long-lasting fight for higher wages. McLean spoke on behalf of her former cheer squad during the Netflix show.

“Happy’ isn’t even the right word for it,” McLean said on the show. “I think I was just … kind of felt, like, a relief, like everything had paid off. And it was, you know, finally, we were done fighting.”

The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders will be back on the sidelines for the team’s Week 2 home opener against the New York Giants inside AT&T Stadium. That game will be played on Sept. 14. Dallas will also play two of its three preseason games at home against the Baltimore Ravens and Atlanta Falcons, respectively.

However, Dallas will begin its 2025 NFL season on the road against another division foe, the reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles during Week 1. The Thursday night regular season opener is slated for an 8:20 p.m. ET start time, and will air live on NBC and Peacock.