Infamous Fyre Festival to Return Next Year After Disastrous Initial Launch

The infamous Fyre Music Festival in 2017 resulted in competing documentaries on Netflix and Hulu and with its founder receiving a six-year prison sentence.

If you missed out on paying thousands for a FEMA tent and cheese sandwiches in 2017, you may get another chance: Fyre Festival II has been announced and 100 pre-sale tickets have already sold out, according to the event’s website.

Billy McFarland, the founder and organizer of the infamous Fyre music festival that became a viral disaster and the source of two hit documentaries, said in an Instagram post that he plans to try again by launching Fyre Fest II, which will take place somewhere in “The Caribbean” near the end of 2024.

McFarland says he developed the “50-page” plan during a seven-month stint in solitary confinement. He also contends he found other ways to profit off the Fyre Fest fiasco, claiming he is working with “one of the biggest and best TV companies” to produce a documentary titled “After the Fyre” and a production company to create “Fyre: The Broadway Musical.”

“I wrote out this 50-page plan of how I would take this overall interest and demand in Fyre and how I would take my ability to bring people from around the world together to make the impossible happen," McFarland explained.

“We spoke to people as far away as the Middle East and South America. Ultimately, we decided that Fyre Festival II was coming back to The Caribbean,” he said without giving details on exactly where in The Caribbean the event would take place. Last year, the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism said it would not endorse or approve of any event “associated with [McFarland].”

The presale tickets were listed at $499 on the event’s website, with prices increasing at different dates. The “last chance” presale tickets, listed as “coming soon” will go for $7,999, according to the website. The site also has a variety of merchandise available for sale.

In 2017, McFarland and several A-list celebrities promoted the Fyre Music Festival, which was touted as the ultimate luxury music festival taking place on the Bahamian island of Exuma. Ticket holders were promised a star-studded lineup, including Blink-182, Pusha T and Lil Yachty. Rapper Ja Rule was also an investor and heavily promoted the event, along with A-list celebrities, social media influencers and models.

Instead of luxury villas and the “best in food, art, music and adventure,” attendees were greeted with FEMA tents, chaos, and virtually every musical act canceling or declining to show. Images of “cheese sandwiches” went viral online and the event’s advertised catering company said it was not serving the event.

There were also reports of looting and tents being burned. In the end, the event cost investors millions of dollars and resulted in no less than eight lawsuits. McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison on wire fraud charges and ordered to pay $26 million in restitution. He was released early to a halfway house in 2022.

McFarland said at the time that he planned to “put together a team of good people for a solid plan to make amends and pay.”

One class-action lawsuit brought by ticket holders resulted in a judgment of $7,720 each, but after the estate’s bankruptcy trustee was only able to recover $1.4 million, much of which was spent on attorney fees. Plaintiffs in the case only received roughly $280, a far cry from the $1,200 to $100,000 ticket price.

Gregory Messer, who oversaw the bankruptcy proceedings, complained that McFarland “provided no cooperation” in recovering funds and noted he kept “essentially no books and records” that would help him identify those who benefited from the scheme.

In an October 2020 podcast interview McFarland gave from prison, he admitted to having regrets about the event, and that he “knowingly lied to raise money for the festival.” He was also found guilty of selling fraudulent tickets to the Met Gala, Burning Man and Coachella while out on bail on the Fyre Festival case.

The presiding judge said McFarland’s “fraud, like a circle, had no ending,” adding that she did not doubt that if he got out early, “he will be on to the next scam.”