Who Owns The Dallas Cowboys?

Jerry Jones has owned the Dallas Cowboys since 1989, serving as the franchise’s owner, president, and general manager. As of early 2026, Forbes values the Cowboys at approximately $13 billion, making it the most valuable sports franchise in the world.

The Dallas Cowboys Origin, Founders, and Early Years

The Dallas Cowboys entered the NFL as an expansion franchise in 1960. The team was co-founded by Clint Murchison Jr. and Bedford Wynne, who were awarded the franchise after protracted negotiations with the league. Tex Schramm was named general manager and Tom Landry was hired as head coach — both would remain with the organization for nearly three decades.

The Cowboys struggled in their first season, finishing 0-11-1. Over the following decade, Landry’s system produced consistent playoff appearances and two Super Bowl wins, in Super Bowl VI (1972) and Super Bowl XII (1978), cementing the team’s reputation and the “America’s Team” nickname coined by NFL Films in 1978.

The Road to Jerry Jones

By the late 1980s, the franchise had deteriorated financially and on the field. The federal government’s FDIC had foreclosed on 13% of the team, and Dallas was losing approximately $1 million per month. H.R. “Bum” Bright, who had acquired the Cowboys in 1984, sold the team to Jones in February 1989 for $140 million.

Jones, an Arkansas-born oil and gas entrepreneur, immediately made his presence felt. He fired Tom Landry — the only head coach in Cowboys history at that point — on his first day of ownership and replaced him with Jimmy Johnson. The move was met with outrage in Dallas but proved decisive: the Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four seasons between 1992 and 1995.

---

Who Owns the Dallas Cowboys?

Jerry Jones is the sole controlling owner of the Dallas Cowboys. He and his wife Gene hold 51% of the franchise. Their three children — Stephen, Charlotte, and Jerry Jones Jr. — equally share the remaining 49%.

Jerry Jones’ Role

Unlike most NFL owners, Jones serves simultaneously as owner, president, and general manager. That third role — GM — is held by only two NFL owners. Jones has stated publicly that he intends to retain the general manager position for as long as he remains owner, and that ownership of the team will eventually pass to his children.

Jones was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017, becoming the 15th owner in history to receive a bust in Canton. He was the first owner in NFL history to guide a franchise to three Super Bowl titles in his first seven years of ownership. His broader business interests include the sportswear category that shaped Cowboys merchandising, oil and gas exploration, real estate development in the Dallas area, Papa John’s franchises, a reported 71% stake in Comstock Resources, and the Legends hospitality company he co-founded in 2008 with the New York Yankees and Goldman Sachs.

Largest Shareholders of the Dallas Cowboys

---

The Dallas Cowboys Mission Statement

The Dallas Cowboys describe their organizational mission as building a winning football team while delivering a world-class experience to fans and partners. The franchise places a premium on competitive performance, commercial excellence, and community engagement across the Dallas–Fort Worth region.

Under Jones, that philosophy has extended well beyond the playing field. The opening of AT&T Stadium in Arlington in 2009 — a $1.2 billion facility Jones championed — was designed explicitly to host events beyond football: college games, concerts, boxing matches, and international soccer. The Cowboys’ companion campus, The Star in Frisco, opened in 2016 as a mixed-use development housing the team’s practice facilities, offices, and public retail space. The project was built around the idea that the Cowboys brand could anchor commercial real estate investment.

The Cowboys generated roughly $250 million in sponsor revenue in a recent season from brands including AT&T, Miller Lite, Bank of America, American Airlines, and Ford Motor. Their licensed merchandise operation, which Jones opted out of the league’s shared system in 2002, has grown substantially faster than the NFL average and is estimated to approach $200 million annually.

---

Who Is on the Board of Directors of the Dallas Cowboys?

The Dallas Cowboys operate as a privately held family business rather than a publicly traded corporation, so the organizational leadership is structured around key executive roles rather than a formal public board of directors. Below are the principal figures and their responsibilities.

Ownership and Senior Leadership

Football Operations

---

How Did the Dallas Cowboys Get Their Name?

When the franchise was granted in 1960, co-founder Clint Murchison Jr. chose “Cowboys” to reflect the culture and heritage of Texas. Dallas, as one of the American Southwest’s major cities, had deep historical ties to cattle ranching, rodeo culture, and the cowboy tradition. The name positioned the team as distinctly Texan at a time when the NFL was expanding beyond its northeastern and midwestern strongholds.

An earlier name, “Rangers,” was considered but dropped because a local minor league baseball team already used it. The Cowboys name stuck and eventually became one of the most recognized sports brands in the United States. It gained additional resonance in the 1970s when NFL Films narrator John Facenda labeled the team “America’s Team” in a highlight reel, a tagline that proved enduring even if the Cowboys themselves did not officially adopt it for years.

Today, the Cowboys wordmark and star logo — a simple blue five-pointed star introduced in 1960 and refined over the decades — is one of the most commercially valuable in professional sports. The entertainment and sports branding parallels are often noted: both the Cowboys and major sports entertainment properties built their brand value on consistent visual identity and national reach rather than geographic loyalty alone.

---

Dallas Cowboys Products and Services

---

How Did the Dallas Cowboys Get Their Money?

The Cowboys’ financial scale rests on several decades of deliberate commercial expansion, much of it driven by Jerry Jones pushing against the NFL’s revenue-sharing model. Before 1995, the league controlled nearly all sponsorship inventory. Jones challenged that system by signing individual deals with Nike, Pepsi, American Express, and AT&T in 1995 — worth more than $60 million — and then holding his ground when the NFL sued him. Both parties dropped their lawsuits the following year, and the Cowboys kept the deals.

That confrontation established a precedent: the Cowboys would operate more aggressively on the commercial side than most franchises. They opted out of the shared merchandise system in 2002, and their merchandise business has grown significantly faster than the league average since. In 2022, the Cowboys became just the second sports team in the world — after FC Barcelona — to generate $1 billion in revenue in a single season. Their 2024 revenue of $1.2 billion was nearly $500 million ahead of any other NFL franchise, according to Forbes.

The broader financial context is relevant. Forbes, which tracks sports franchise valuations annually, placed the Cowboys at $13 billion in early 2026 — a 69-fold increase from the $140 million Jones paid in 1989, compared to 21x for the S&P 500 over the same period.

CBS, one of the NFL’s broadcast partners, is part of the media rights ecosystem that distributes approximately $255 million per team per year in television revenue — revenue that flows regardless of wins or losses, making NFL franchise ownership among the most financially stable assets in professional sports.

FAQs