Nothing to cheer about. Despite the massive success of Netflix’s Cheer, Navarro College isn’t exactly rolling in dough.
Navarro signed a $30,000 deal with a production company in 2018 to make a then-untitled cheerleading documentary, according to an article published by Sportico on Wednesday, January 19. The institution reportedly received the same amount of money for Cheer‘s second season, which was released on January 12.
“Everybody thinks we made a million dollars off of the show, and as you can see from the contract, we did not,” Stacie Snipes, director of marketing and public information at Navarro told the outlet.
Season 2 of the sports doc also highlights Navarro’s main rivals, Trinity Valley Community college. Despite joining the Netflix series after it already became a phenomenon, TVCC also received only $30,000 from the production company.
Cheer was an instant hit when it premiered in January 2020, following coach Monica Aldama and her squad as they trained for the 2019 NCA & NDA Collegiate Cheer & Dance Championship . As a result of the show’s popularity, Aldama, 49, and several other cast members were thrust into the spotlight, with the cheer coach even competing on season 29 of Dancing With the Stars. She released her memoir, Full Out! Leadership Lessons from America’s Favorite Coach, earlier this year.
Though the reality series put the small school on the map, Navarro College hasn’t received the same attention in the years since Cheer‘s debut.
“We have had declining enrollment,” Snipes told Sportico in Wednesday’s report, noting that Cheer hit the peak of its popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. “I could probably name four or five students that we heard came here because they heard about our college [through Cheer].”
Snipes acknowledged that Navarro wasn’t expecting a huge boom in enrollment as a result of the show, adding “We just wanted to have a really good show produced about her program; we never really thought about having people flocking to our school.”
In addition to chronicling Navarro and TVCC’s quests to prepare for the NCA & NDA Collegiate Cheer & Dance Championship, season 2 of Cheer also addressed the sexual misconduct allegations against breakout star Jerry Harris. Us Weekly confirmed in September 2020 that the Netflix personality, 22, was arrested on child pornography production charges. Harris was held without bond at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago and is still awaiting trial.
In December 2020, he pleaded not guilty to seven felony charges — four counts of sexual exploitation of children, one count of enticement, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of travel with the intent to engage in an illicit sexual contact with a minor. The controversy sent shockwaves through the Navarro cheer squad and left Aldama feeling blindsided.
“I can’t even wrap my head around how I should feel. This has been a tough year,” she said of the allegations at the start of season 2. “I keep putting one foot in front of the other, every single day. I don’t have a choice.”
Both seasons of Cheer are available to stream on Netflix.
