Dallas, Texas: Cowboys Cheerleaders Unionize as Team Recognizes Their Association

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have formed a union, and the team has agreed to recognize it. In a joint statement issued on Friday, October 23, 2026, the Cowboys said the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Association will serve as the collective bargaining representative for the cheer squad, according to the Associated Press. The announcement closes a long public fight over how little one of the most famous cheer squads in professional sports has been paid.

What was announced

"The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are an esteemed part of the Cowboys organization, deeply respected for the talent and dedication they exhibit," the joint statement said. "They remain one of the most sought-after opportunities for talented dancers worldwide."

USA TODAY reported that the new association is an independent group and that the cheerleaders will now collectively bargain with the team. The Cowboys had no further comment when contacted by USA TODAY Sports. The Associated Press reported that a contact for the new association could not immediately be found on Friday. The joint statement did not announce new pay terms, so the first contract talks will decide what the recognition is worth in practice.

Years of pay fights behind the announcement

The recognition follows years of pressure over pay. In 2019, the Cowboys settled a lawsuit brought by a former cheerleader who accused the team of paying her less than minimum wage. The Associated Press reported that the settlement led the squad to double its per game pay, from $200 to $400. FOX 4 in Dallas reported that cheerleaders made as little as $15 per game during the team's heyday in the 1990s, citing the Dallas Morning News.

The fight reached a much wider audience through television. In the second season of the Netflix series America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, which aired in 2025, one of the cheerleaders said the members were getting a 400 percent boost in pay. USA TODAY reported that the Dallas Morning News had reported the cheerleaders were due a 400 percent raise for the 2025 season, and that the New York Times reported in 2024 that a fifth year cheerleader made $15 per hour and $500 for each appearance.

Why the show mattered

Victor Chen, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the Associated Press that the Netflix series likely aided the cheerleaders in their fight, and that without the notoriety from the show the team may have just tried to replace them. "You see a lot of that inequality of compensation in any sort of artistic or entertainment field where you have lots of people clamoring to get into it and maybe being unpaid or very poorly paid to do so," Chen said.

Not the first cheer union

The Dallas squad is not the first in the NFL to organize. The Buffalo Jills, the cheer squad for the Buffalo Bills, became the first cheerleading squad to unionize in 1995, after a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board allowed them to form a cheerleaders association and vote to join it. The Jills later disbanded following a 2014 lawsuit in which a former member said the cheerleaders worked hundreds of hours for free and were sexually harassed. The Dallas recognition now gives the best known squad in the league a bargaining seat that Buffalo's squad won three decades ago and then lost.

The Cowboys are the most valuable pro sports team in the world, according to Forbes magazine, a point the Associated Press noted in its report. What the cheerleaders can win at the bargaining table, and how fast a first contract arrives, are the open questions after Friday's announcement.