The typical pay for an NFL cheerleader is around US $150 per home game.
Some make more, of course, but the average is about $150.
Given that the average NFL game lasts three hours, and cheerleaders are on the field at least an hour before game time, they are making less than $40 per hour to perform in front of a live audience of 60,000 fans and a national television audience in the millions.
This does not include the time spent preparing and practicing for the game. They are also independent contractors, meaning they don’t get health insurance.
Hopefully, they are not injured while performing.
A couple of thoughts on this:
If cheerleaders exist who find this amount of money acceptable, then paying them that amount is simply capitalism. Perhaps these cheerleaders are fulfilling a lifelong dream, parlaying their position as an NFL cheerleader into something bigger and better, or simply having fun doing it.
I’m paid to perform on stages around the world, but I still perform on Moth stages for free, so I get it.
Sometimes you just love the job.
I also parlayed my Moth success into an entirely new career.
Three, actually.
But here is my second thought:
The NFL made $23 billion last year.
The minimum salary for an NFL player is $840,000.
Even if you can pay cheerleaders $150 per game, you shouldn’t. It makes you look like monsters. Sometimes you pay a reasonable salary even if you could pay less because you want to demonstrate basic human decency, even if you have none.
Even if you’re a money-hungry creep, fake it because public perception matters.
If NFL teams doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled cheerleader pay, it would change nothing about a team’s economic structure.
Instead of making one ten-thousandth of an NFL player’s minimum salary, the cheerleader would make six ten-thousandths of that minimum salary.
Not exactly a significant increase, given the total number of dollars involved.
When we watch people perform at a high level in front of an enormous audience, we like to think they are being fairly compensated. When I sit in the stands at the Patriots game and see the cheerleaders running out onto the field, my first thought is always:
Why is Patriots ownership so damn cheap when it comes to these people? Why don’t they feel awful about paying these people so little?
Parking lot attendants make more than the cheerleaders, and they aren’t performing in front of tens of thousands of people in high-stakes scenarios. Either the cheerleaders are a valuable asset to the team and deserve to be fairly compensated, or you should eliminate the position entirely, because their current pay makes owners look like jerks.
The fact that almost all cheerleaders are women makes these NFL owners even worse. Not only are owners clinging to their dollar bills, but they are also underpaying the only women in public-facing positions on an NFL team.
Now they look like sexist jerks.
Paying a little more to avoid that perception would be a smart economic move.
So far, most NFL owners are too stupid to do so.
