Charlotte Jones, the daughter of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, revealed on Monday why the family decided to finally allow a documentary about her father’s tenure at the football club. Netflix is set to release a 10-episode docuseries on the subject.
“For years, probably for a decade, we had been approached by many—including NFL Films themselves—‘We need to do a documentary about the Cowboys,’” said Charlotte Jones, who spoke at a SXSW panel on Monday afternoon. “About Jerry’s tenure. About the ’90s. About all of that. And for years we had said no.”
Jones appeared at the panel alongside her brother, Stephen Jones. The two discussed how they joined their father’s investment into the Cowboys in 1989 and helped turn the team from losing $75,000 per day into the economic powerhouse that it is today.
She continued, “Mainly because we felt like that football story had been told. There’s A Football Life, there’s a 30 for 30. We think we have a better story to tell than what they’re after. Then along came David Ellison. And David truly understood what we were trying to say. And I think when you’ve gone on the journey that you’ve gone on with our family… For us, it’s an American dream.”
During the interview, the siblings recalled how the family used innovative marketing techniques to shift the fortunes of the franchise. She said, “This is what it’s about. It’s the hard work, the chance, the risk, the failure, the discouragement, and then the hope, and then the victory and the success of that roller coaster. It’s said in football, but we really wanted to tell that. And David got that.”
Netflix, which won a reported bidding war for the rights, is billing the documentary as on par with the Michael Jordan docuseries The Last Dance. Ellison is CEO of Skydance Sports and previously worked on the 2023 film “Air.”
“Netflix was excited to jump on board, and that was a history-making deal. And hopefully it will be as interesting to others as it has been for us,” she said.
That dream led the family to the Star in Frisco, a 91-acre sports campus and facility that was created in partnership with the City of Frisco and Frisco school district and its football program. As Stephen Jones said, if the quarterback of the Frisco High School team is hurt, he “goes to the same place where Tony Romo got his shoulder and back fixed.”
