NFL cheerleader salary: Years after wage lawsuits, the fight for fair pay in football goes on

It’s been almost a decade since an NFL cheerleader identified as “Lacy T.” filed a landmark wage lawsuit against the Oakland Raiders, claiming that the team violated labor laws by paying her what amounted to less than $5 an hour when rehearsals and unpaid events were factored in. Her legal salvo sparked a movement that quickly spread throughout the league, fueling debates about fair pay and gender-based discrimination hiding in plain sight within the very lucrative world of professional football.

Other lawsuits followed. Some teams agreed to pay their squads in line with wage standards, in addition to settlements, and for a while it seemed as if real change was imminent. But was it?

As millions of fans turn their attention to Arizona’s State Farm Stadium for Super Bowl LVII this Sunday, it’s hard to say for certain how much progress has really been made. A report just last year from NBC News pinpointed the average pay for NFL cheerleaders to be about $150 a game, or roughly $22,500 a year, which is not much different than what it was reported to be in the original Raiders lawsuit. Although the rate varies depending on the profile of the squad, it’s clear that cheerleading, even at the highest levels, is a discipline in which compensation doesn’t match the level of hard work that goes into it.

And when you see figures like $4.47 billion (the average value of a team) and $2.05 billion (sponsorship revenue for the most recent season) splashed across headlines and press releases, it seems as if advertisers, players, snack makers, and just about everyone else from the NFL except cheerleaders are cashing in—with plenty of cash to spare.

That’s probably why the issue of cheerleader pay bubbles up like clockwork every year around Super Bowl Sunday. A video shared across social media platforms this week by More Perfect Union’s Jessica Burbank nicely sums up the ongoing state of affairs. “You’re telling me a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader makes less than a cashier at McDonald’s?” she says in the humorous video, which was viewed over 107,000 times on Twitter and over 290,000 times on TikTok.

In a deeper dive, Katie Thornton of the Guardian deftly explores both the cultural roots and the ongoing professional consequences of the fight for fair treatment in football. “There is something in the inherent, rigid femininity of cheerleading, it seems, that makes us less likely to take seriously the struggles those in the industry face,” Thornton writes. “Instead, we deride cheerleaders for embracing a type of femininity that many women have been encouraged to adhere to their whole lives.”

If you’re a regular football viewer, it’s perhaps something to ponder more than once a year. Cheerleaders, no doubt, do what they do out of a love for the game. Wouldn’t the game be better if the promise of fair compensation weren’t always so far afield?