After more than a decade of fighting for higher pay, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders have scored a major win. 

Season two of Netflix’s blockbuster series “America’s Sweethearts,” which premiered Wednesday, culminates in the announcement that the cheerleaders will be getting a massive 400 percent pay raise. The increase came after behind-the-scenes work from a handful of cheerleaders on the team who advocated for raises throughout the 2024 season, building on movement that’s been going on since NFL cheerleaders first began to sue their teams over low wages more than a decade ago.  

Cheerleader Jada McLean told the New York Times that veterans will be making more than $75 an hour, up from about $15 an hour in the 2024 NFL season. Pay structures for event appearance fees, such as community and charity events and performances outside of football games, are also changing. Previously, cheerleaders got $500 for each appearance with some variance depending on seniority. The specifics of the new contracts, however, were not revealed.

In season two of “America’s Sweethearts,” the cheerleaders talk openly of fighting for better pay and even consider staging a walkout to put pressure on team management. 

“Our efforts were heard,” said cheerleader Megan McElaney, one of a handful that lead the charge for higher pay, in the show’s final episode. “I get emotional knowing that I was a part of that. Dancers are athletes. They have so much value.”

Kelli Finglass, the team’s director, then tells the team that they “moved some mountains this year that will forever change our organization and hopefully dancer organizations across the world.” 

“That has been 60-plus years long overdue,” Finglass said on the show. 

It’s a stark contrast from the docuseries’ first season, where pay was a footnote. Former Cowboys cheerleader Kat Puryear reveals her salary through 2022 was equivalent to that of “a substitute teacher” or a “Chick-fil-A worker that works full time.” Later on TikTok she added her job is a “full-time commitment, but part-time pay.”

But Dallas Cowboys Executive Vice President Charlotte Jones waved off the issue on the show: “There’s a lot of cynicism around pay for NFL cheerleaders, and as it should be — they’re not paid a lot. But the facts are they actually don’t come here for the money. They come here for something that’s actually bigger than that to them.”

Still, that one minute and 46 seconds of pay discussion in season one put the stadium lights back on an issue that had been percolating for years, ever since former Oakland Raiderette Lacy Thibodeaux Fields sued her team in 2014 alleging a violation of state minimum wage and labor laws. 

For the 2014 season — nine hours a week in practice, another nine on game days and at least 10 community events per season — she said she earned barely $1,000. Her lawsuit was followed by more than a half dozen others on teams across the NFL, including from cheerleaders saying they were paid nothing at all for the work they did. Many had to pay out of pocket to fulfill stringent appearance requirements set by the teams. 

In Thibodeaux Fields’ lawsuit, she uncovers how her team required her to maintain a tan, a French manicure and her 103-pound frame. If she so much as strayed more than five pounds over, or forgot to bring her pom poms to practice, she would be fined. A separate lawsuit by former Buffalo Bills cheerleader Maria Pinzone detailed how cheerleaders were required to do jumping jacks in front of staff as they scrutinized their bodies. They were known as “jiggle tests.” 

But all of the lawsuits filed over the past decade settled. And no big sea change came. 

Until pay came up again on “America’s Sweethearts.”

Suddenly, cheerleader pay was again being compared with football player pay (Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott earns about $60 million) — and even mascot pay. In a 2018 lawsuit against the Cowboys, former cheerleader Erica Wilkins alleged she was paid $16,500 in her final year with the team while the mascot, Rowdy, who was played by a man, earned $65,000 a year. 

The series, which documented the hours and hours they practiced while holding down full-time jobs, also made it harder to make the case that the job was a fun, voluntary side gig for the cheerleaders. Now, change for the Cowboys cheerleaders, who more than 50 years ago set the cheerleading standard that all teams now follow, could trickle to other teams. 

“I think this will put pressure on other teams to follow suit,” said Dave Berri, the co-author of “Slaying the Trolls! Why the Trolls are Very, Very Wrong About Women and Sports,” which dedicates a chapter to cheerleaders. But he cautions; “Because women have historically been paid so poorly in sports, massive increases in pay still don’t bring women to what they are worth.”

Watching the pay discussion unfold over the years since she started the conversation, Thibodeaux Fields told The 19th last year that she was hopeful that every effort made in a decade-plus of advocacy would one day lead to this. 

On Wednesday morning after the news broke she wrote: “I’m thrilled to hear this news. Artistic talents and hard work should always be well paid. This is a well deserved raise!” 

McLean, who led the push inside the organization, will never get to experience the higher pay she fought for, but, as she concludes on the show: “I’m proud of those of us who sparked the fire.”