On a Hollywood red carpet last week, Jerry Jones, the owner of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, was asked about his team’s upcoming season.
“If we get that offensive line rolling,” Jones told an interviewer, “we’ll have a good team.”
What counts as a “good” season is more subjective in Dallas than anywhere else — and it’s why, ever since Jones purchased the team for $140 million in 1989, there has been no other North American professional sports franchise quite like the Cowboys.
Since they won Super Bowls in 1992, 1993 and 1995, the Cowboys have not advanced to a conference championship game in 30 years, the fourth-longest active drought in the NFL. That lack of on-field performance would typically doom a franchise’s relevance.
Not the Cowboys.
Since the 1996 season, Dallas has employed eight head coaches, irked several of its biggest superstars during drawn-out contract negotiations and lost 13 of its last 18 playoff games. Yet with Jones keenly keeping them in the conversation, they have won the mindshare of a global audience.
The reason Jones was strolling the red carpet was the premiere of “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” a Netflix docuseries about Jones and his team’s decades of drama. It began streaming only days after Sportico ranked the Cowboys as the NFL’s most valuable franchise, with a worth north of $12 billion. Last year, CNBC also ranked Dallas as the NFL’s most valuable team, while Forbes named it the world’s most valuable sports franchise.
The Cowboys’ value and mystique have been perpetually increased by Jones, 82, who carries official titles of owner, president and general manager of the team while also serving as its chief ringmaster, one uniquely attuned to what fans want.
“I do believe if we’re not being looked at, then I’ll do my part to get us looked at,” Jones said at the Netflix premiere. “The beautiful thing for networks, if you will, streaming companies, is that the NFL is a 365-day-a-year interest factory. A lot of programming you have to spend as much … to promote it as you to do make it. The Cowboys are a soap opera 365 days a year. When it gets low, I’ll stir it up.”
And few teams capitalize on and court that attention like they do.
Despite their 7-10 record in 2024, 13 games involving the team still ranked among the 100 most-watched prime-time telecasts of last year, which tied with Kansas City for most among all NFL teams. To no surprise, six Dallas games will be broadcast nationally and in prime time this season, second only to Kansas City.
According to Fanatics, the global sports merchandise retailer, the team ranks among the five best-selling teams on its platform, across all sports, since 2023. Dallas’ merchandise has been sold in more than 110 countries.
The Cowboys have reached the divisional round of the playoffs, one round away from the NFC championship, four times since 2009, only to lose all four times. Last year, their playoff hopes were doused by midseason after an injury to quarterback Dak Prescott. And yet they remained the NFL’s hottest ticket in 2024.
On StubHub, the online ticket retailer, the Cowboys sold not only the most tickets of any team, but they did so overwhelmingly — selling 63% more tickets than the second-ranked team.
Entering this season, few are buying Jones’ team as a title contender. Only 1% of futures bets on DraftKings Sportsbook have been placed on the Cowboys to win the NFC championship, according to a company spokesperson. Still, that hasn’t depressed demand to watch Dallas play, with the team selling more tickets entering the 2025 season than any other team — including 40% more than the even the second-ranked Buffalo Bills, according to a StubHub spokesperson.
It costs 89% less to watch Buffalo, a Super Bowl contender featuring the reigning Most Valuable Player in Josh Allen, on the road this year than the Cowboys, according to the company. The spokesperson wrote that the Dallas spike may reflect several factors, “including the team’s national fan base and widespread brand recognition.”
Beyond the revenue they bring in, the Cowboys have understood how to win the attention economy, too. The latest Netflix docuseries isn’t the streamer’s first foray into the Cowboys’ culture. After the docuseries “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” debuted in the summer of 2024, it was ranked in Netflix’s global top 10 for English TV for four consecutive weeks, and it was ranked among the top 10 U.S. TV shows for five straight weeks, according to the company. It wound up ranked in the top-10 TV list for 27 countries — proving yet again that the team’s success or failure on the field are only notionally connected to its popularity. (It has been renewed for a third season.)
In 2010, the Cowboys topped Nielsen’s media-exposure rankings in part by producing the largest gross audience during nationally televised games. More than a decade later, that exposure transcends borders. In 2024, one firm’s analysis of Google search data suggested that more Google searches per month were Cowboys-related than there were any other team. Much of that interest could be attributed to decisions stoked by Jones.
In the winter, his promotion of the team’s offensive coordinator to head coach was received unfavorably locally. He has prolonged contract talks in recent seasons with Prescott and receiver CeeDee Lamb before he reached deals on the eve of the regular season. The situation has led to calls for Jones to step down as the general manager overseeing the roster but kept the Cowboys a nonstop sports-talk topic.
This month, the cycle has repeated again with star defender Micah Parsons. Since Parsons, who is seeking a lucrative new contract, asked for a trade this month, Jones has regularly held media briefings during the team’s preseason practices and offered cryptic updates.
On the red carpet, Jones acknowledged that when he bought the Cowboys in 1989, he personally had only a fraction of the required money to actually pay for them, relying on borrowed money to make up the difference, and that once he was in charge, he was “winging” running an NFL franchise, losing what he said was often $1 million per month. But what Jones knew, instinctually, was how to keep eyes on his team. When the Cowboys opened a new stadium in 2009, it included a new innovation. To walk from their locker room to the field, Cowboys players had to use a tunnel that passed between a pair of glass-walled lounges from which high-paying fans could watch.
“It is wonderful to have the great athletes and the great players, but there’s something more there,” Jones said last week. “There’s sizzle, there’s emotion, and, if you will, there’s controversy. That controversy is good stuff in terms of keeping and having people’s attention.”
The post The Dallas Cowboys haven’t won big in 30 years. Or have they? appeared first on NBC News.
