Five NFL Teams Remain Gay Pride Month Holdouts But NFLShop Put Their Pride Merchandise On Sale Anyway

If you have any doubts the NFL is committed to celebrating and, according to Dez Bryant, pushing gay pride month, then all you have to do is visit the league's official online merchandise shop where you'll find some 507 pride items for sale.

Some transparency: Not all 507 pride items are directly tied to gay pride because some simply advocate pride in a particular team's accomplishments, such as championships, and not a sexual orientation or agenda.

NFLShop Full Of Gay Pride Merch

But anyone browsing NFLShop.com can't help but run across hundreds of LGBTQ+ inspired caps, hoodies, T-shirts, flags, cups and other merchandise – all emblazoned in the rainbow colors and the trademark logos of the 32 teams.

Look, the NFL is proud of its gay pride advocacy. 

It provides financial support and collaboration with a host of different organizations that serve the LGBTQ+ community. 

The NFL also works with local LGBTQ+ organizations surrounding NFL events, including the Super Bowl, in each host city.

And part of the NFL's gay pride outreach includes having its teams recognize gay pride month, which is in June for some swaths of the population, on various social media.

Activists with the Gilbert Baker Foundation carry a 1,000-foot rainbow pride flag during the WorldPride 2025 parade in Washington, DC, US, on Saturday, June 7, 2025. This year marks the 50th Anniversary of Pride celebrations in Washington. Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Five Teams Not Celebrating Gay Pride Month

To kick off gay pride month this year, 22 clubs immediately signaled their embrace of the LGBTQ+ community by posting about their support on X or Instagram or Facebook.

That means 10 teams initially declined to show their public support for gay pride month. But that number soon shrunk to nine teams, then eight and is now at five teams that have not joined the rest of the league in the gay pride month acknowledgment.

The five teams are the Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals, Tennessee Titans, Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys.

Those teams have instead celebrated other organizations and events this month.

Cowboys Celebrate Prescott Family Addition

The Titans publicly celebrated U.S. Marines week. The Cowboys celebrated the birth of Dak Prescott's second child, a baby girl named Aurora Rayne Prescott. And the Bengals celebrated national yo-yo day on June 6.

But no gay pride celebration posts on X, for example, from any of those teams.

The ironic thing is those teams that have opted out of the gay pride celebration on social media have somehow been included in the gay pride sale on NFLShop.

There is a Titans pride T-shirt with the team logo emblazoned in rainbow colors available for $34.99 at the NFLShop. There is also a gay pride Titans beach towel available for $31.99 and a flag for $39.99.

The Chiefs are owned by the deeply religious Hunt family. But there is a Kansas City pride shirt available on NFLShop for $31.99, there's a Chiefs pride logo shirt for $34.99 and there's also a one-sided Chiefs pride flag.

Dallas Cowboys gay pride T-Shirts available at NFLShop (Credit: NFLShop.com)

Gay Pride Caps, T-Shirts, Flags Available

Same with the Cowboys. They didn't post about gay pride month. There is no story about gay pride month on their website. They have not acknowledged gay pride on their Instagram account, which serves 4.9 million followers.

But the NFLShop offers a Cowboys gay pride flag, white logo pride shirt for $34.99 and Cowboys Fanatics White Pride logo shirt for $29.99.

The Bengals? You can buy a pride adjustable cap for $29.99, a Cincinnati pride shirt for $34.99 and the requisite 3-foot by 5-foot pride flag with the Bengals regular logo superimposed for $39.99.

And all this begs questions:

What is the point of these teams making a statement in declining to embrace gay pride month on their social media or websites if gay pride merchandise with their logos is on NFLShop.com?

Pride Gear At NFLShop But Not Team Shops

Well, it is possible the individual teams have no say over the merchandise the NFL sells in its official online pro shop.  

The Cowboys official pro shop, for example, offers no such gay pride merchandise. Neither does the Kansas City Chiefs pro shop.

So it's possible the NFL, which has licensing rights, is selling the merchandise on its own site while the teams opt not to do so on their sites. OutKick reached out to an NFL spokesman on this but has gotten no clarification on the matter.

The point is the NFL is continuing to not only support but market gay pride month. And it is doing that, even when some individual teams decline to participate as best they can.