If you spent the last several years quietly stunned by what all-star cheer costs — the competition fees, the mandatory apparel, the camp invoices that somehow always came from the same company — a federal court has now said, in effect, that you weren't imagining it.
In 2024, Varsity Brands agreed to pay $82.5 million to resolve a class action brought by cheer families and consumers across 35 states who indirectly paid Varsity for competitions and apparel. The suit — Jessica Jones et al. v. Varsity Brands, LLC et al. — centered on allegations that Varsity and affiliated entities ran anticompetitive plays inside the all-star cheer market. The settlement got final court approval in December 2024.
So here's the question every parent actually wants answered: did any of that money come to you — and if not, why not?
The $82.5 million was never the payout
Let's kill the biggest misconception right now. The "$82.5 million" figure is a fund, not a family check. It covers legal fees, administration costs, and everything else before a dime reaches a parent.
On February 12, Chief U.S. District Judge Sheryl H. Lipman of the Western District of Tennessee approved the settlement administrator's final report and authorized payments to eligible class members. When the numbers landed, they told the real story:
Read that again: only 5,831 valid claims were approved. If you know how many kids compete all-star in this country, you know that number is a rounding error. The average payout of $8,181 is real money — genuinely helpful to the families who got it — but the number of families who got it was tiny compared to everyone who paid Varsity over the years.
The $82.5 million was the ceiling for the lawyers and the court. For most families, the payout was a number they never saw at all.
Your state decided whether you got anything
Here's the part that makes parents furious once they understand it: where you live determined whether you had any legal standing at all.
Recovery in this settlement was limited to residents of 33 states. That's not arbitrary. Federal antitrust law generally protects direct buyers — meaning the gyms and schools that wrote checks straight to Varsity. It does not automatically protect indirect buyers, which is what you are: you paid your gym, and your gym paid Varsity.
Most states passed their own laws extending antitrust protection to indirect buyers. Some states didn't. States like Texas, Georgia, and Alabama never passed equivalent laws — so families there had no standing in this settlement structure, no matter how much they spent or how obvious the overcharge felt.
Two families with identical spending, identical gyms, identical seasons — one in a covered state, one not — walked away with completely different outcomes. That's not a Varsity decision; it's a patchwork of state law. But it's cold comfort if you're the mom in the wrong ZIP code.
Who was actually eligible
If you're trying to figure out whether you were ever in the pool, the window was specific. Eligible recipients were individuals and entities who indirectly paid Varsity or its affiliates for certain fees and expenses tied to:
- Participating in Varsity Cheer Competitions
- Varsity Cheer apparel
- Varsity Cheer Camp fees
- Accommodations at Varsity Cheer Competitions
The covered period ran from December 10, 2016 through March 31, 2024 — and again, only if you paid from one of the 33 covered states. If all of that lined up and you filed a valid claim, you were in the group that split the fund.
What Varsity was actually accused of
This is the part that explains a decade of your invoices. The lawsuit alleged that as a result of Varsity's anticompetitive behavior, class members indirectly paid higher prices for cheer competitions, apparel, camps, and related goods — while Varsity pulled in what the filings call "supracompetitive illegal profits."
How, allegedly? By dominating the market for all-star cheer events — including buying up rival event producers — plus purported exclusive-dealing agreements and alleged collusion with the U.S. All Star Federation (USASF), the very body that governs the sport. In plain terms: the company that ran the competitions, sold the uniforms, hosted the camps, and helped shape the rules was accused of using all of that to keep prices high and rivals out.
If you ever wondered why it felt like there was no cheaper alternative, that feeling is essentially what the plaintiffs argued in court.
This wasn't the first check — or the last
The $82.5 million matters, but it's one piece of a much longer story.
By spring 2026, Varsity had cleared its third antitrust matter. That's a pattern, not a one-off. And the pressure is no longer coming only from private plaintiffs.
Private equity, Congress, and why this isn't over
Varsity is now owned by the private-equity giant KKR. And the ownership structure itself has become a political target.
The company was recently cited in bicameral Congressional legislation that would automatically designate any private-equity owner of youth sports facilities, associations, or teams a "vulture investor" — subject to a private right of action. In other words, lawmakers are floating a world where families could sue PE owners of youth sports directly.
Whether that bill goes anywhere is an open question. But it signals that scrutiny of who owns your kid's sport — and how they profit from it — is expanding well beyond a single class action.
The checks were the past. Who's allowed to own the sport your kid loves is the fight that's actually still live.
The part that isn't about money
Here's what tends to get buried under the dollar figures: the settlements didn't only extract cash. They required changes to business practices. Varsity agreed to stop some of its allegedly anticompetitive practices as part of resolving the litigation.
For families, that structural piece may matter more over time than any one-time payout. Anecdotally across cheer parent groups, the hope isn't really the check — it's whether more real competition among event producers and apparel makers eventually pulls prices down at the gym level. That's the long game, and it's genuinely unresolved.
What a parent should actually do now
- Know your state mattered. Recovery hinged on residency in one of 33 covered states. If you paid from Texas, Georgia, Alabama, or another non-covered state, the lack of a check wasn't an oversight — it was state law.
- Understand the window has largely closed. The claim and payment window for the $82.5M fund is essentially done; distribution was authorized in February 2026. This isn't a "file today" opportunity.
- Watch the official settlement site for any residual or undistributed-fund updates — sometimes leftover money gets redistributed or handled separately.
- Treat any payout as possibly taxable and check with a tax professional before you spend it.
- Follow the ongoing litigation and legislation. Future antitrust matters and the PE "vulture investor" bill are what could actually shape competition — and pricing — going forward.
If you got a check, good — you earned it years ago at every registration deadline and uniform fitting. If you didn't, it probably wasn't about you at all. It was about a line on a map and a law your state legislature never passed.
And the truest thing I can tell you: the money that came back was small, the money that went out over the years was not, and the question of who profits from your kid's sport is far from settled.