Billy McFarland, who was convicted of fraud over the disastrous Fyre Festival in 2017, has announced that a planned follow-up has been cancelled and he is putting the festival’s brand up for sale.
Last week, Fyre Festival 2, which was supposed to take place on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, between 30 May to 2 June, was indefinitely postponed, with ticket-holders informed that they had been issued refunds.
McFarland founded the event eight years ago and billed it as the ultimate beach party, promising attendees the chance to rub shoulders with celebrities while luxuriating on the white sandy shores of a Caribbean island.
Instead, announced acts such as Blink-182 and Migos dropped out, and guests were left to languish in ratty tents while being served up sad cheese sandwiches in styrofoam containers.
The situation inspired a pair of dueling documentaries and landed McFarland in jail on a federal fraud conviction. A second event planned for this year was announced for Playa Del Carmen in Mexico, but never materialized.
In a new statement posted on the festival’s official website, McFarland announced that he is now prepared to sell the rights to the Fyre Festival name.
“When my team and I launched Fyre Festival 2, it was about two things: finishing what I started and making things right,” he wrote.
“Over the past two years, we’ve poured everything into bringing Fyre back with honesty, transparency, relentless effort, and creativity. We’ve taken the long road to rebuilding trust. We rebuilt momentum. And we proved one thing without a doubt: Fyre is one of the most powerful attention engines in the world.
“Since 2017, Fyre has dominated headlines, documentaries, and conversations as one of the world’s most talked-about music festivals. We knew that Fyre was big, but we didn’t realize just how massive the wave would become. That wave has brought us here: to a point where we know it’s time to call for assistance.
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“This brand is bigger than any one person and bigger than what I’m able to lead on my own. It’s a movement. And it deserves a team with the scale, experience, and infrastructure to realize its potential.
“We have decided the best way to accomplish our goals is to sell the Fyre Festival brand, including its trademarks, IP, digital assets, media reach, and cultural capital – to an operator that can fully realize its vision.
“There is a clear path for operators and entrepreneurs with strong domain expertise to build Fyre into a global force in entertainment, media, fashion, CPG, and more.”
McFarland went on to say that he believes he has found a new venue for Fyre Festival 2 outside of Mexico, but he “can’t risk a repeat of what happened in Playa Del Carmen, where support quickly turned into public distancing once media attention intensified.”
McFarland, who served four years of a six-year sentence for his fraud conviction, still owes $26 million in restitution after the failure of the original Fyre Festival.
In the meantime, the festival’s name has become a byword for bad organization. When lengthy delays occurred at this month’s Coachella Festival, fans branded it “worse than Fyre Festival.”
Tickets for Fyre Festival 2, which was marketed under the slogan “FYRE Festival 2 is real,” went on sale in February at a starting fee of $1,400 and up to $25,000, while premium packages were also being sold for as much as $1.1 million.
At the time, McFarland said a statement, “I’m sure many people think I’m crazy for doing this again. But I feel I’d be crazy not to do it again.”
