Billy McFarland, the convicted fraudster behind 2017's infamous Fyre Festival, says fans are already snapping up tickets—ranging from $400 to $1.1 million—for the event's second edition.
Despite the original festival’s catastrophic failure, which spawned two documentaries and landed its founder in jail, McFarland has revealed that he hopes to gather 3,000 people for Fyre Fest II.
The 32-year-old disgraced founder revealed yesterday where and when the festival will be taking place across his social media channels—and already, he says, over 1,200 people have applied for tickets.
10 hours in: 1,208 unique applications for over 5,000 tickets. fyre 2 will only hold 3,000 people
— Billy McFarland (@pyrtbilly) September 9, 2024
Scheduled to run from April 25 to April 28 next year, Fyre Festival II will take place on a privately owned island off the coast of Mexico—and despite only being seven months away, the festival has not yet booked any artists.
Still, in an interview with NBC News, McFarland insisted that Fyre Festival's sequel won’t be a repeat of its first act.
For starters, this time around, he claimed that he has hired a festival production company to “handle the stages and the bathrooms and all the stuff that I clearly don’t know how to do.”
McFarland didn’t name the production company, but in a separate interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said that it has bought a 51% stake in the Fyre Festival’s parent company, Fyre Media.
Plus, in an interview with the Today show he insisted that Fyre Festival II is “not going to be just music.”
For example, he said that for $1.1 million, fans can spend their time scuba diving with him while “bouncing around to other islands.”
Another activity idea McFarland has for the festival is live fights on the beach. Although he hasn’t booked any entertainers yet, he claimed that he’s in talks with Karate Combat to set this up.
Fortune has contacted McFarland for comment.
The infamous Fyre Festival fiasco
The original Fyre Festival was pitched as a “luxury musical festival” on Pablo Escobar’s former private island in the Bahamas and was backed by celebrities including Emily Ratajkowski, Kendall Jenner, and Bella Hadid.
Tickets ranged from $500 to $12,000, and the event promised luxury villas, chef-made meals, and a stellar lineup including Pusha T, Blink-182, Major Lazer, Disclosure, and some 30 other artists.
In reality, the festival was set in a parking lot, with none of the celebrities mentioned in sight; meanwhile, guests were welcomed with tents, prepackaged sandwiches, and unsanitary conditions that included no running water.
To make matters worse, there weren’t enough beds to go around, luggage had been “lost,” there was no phone signal, and festival goers were forced to fend for themselves.
The catastrophic realities of Fyre resulted in documentaries on Hulu and Netflix, class-action lawsuits, and jail time for McFarland in 2017.
He was ordered to pay back the $26 million he took from his investors, and spent four years behind bars before he was released on probation in 2022.
“I was totally guilty. I committed a crime. Obviously went to prison, and I deserved that prison sentence,” McFarland told NBC News.
“But it wasn’t until the day after the festival was canceled and I had one of my early investors call me and basically say, ‘We need to do this, this and this, or else you’re going to be in the front page of the Wall Street Journal in handcuffs.’”
McFarland’s second act ‘has to work’
The massive failure of McFarland’s previous—and borderline dangerous—festival attempt may explain why so many people are interested in round two.
In August 2023, the first drop of $499 presale tickets for Fyre Fest II sold out within a day, even though its website at the time offered no lineup or location.
“I think there’s a large number of people who want to go to Fyre II because they’re unsure of the outcome, and they would like to have a front-row seat no matter what happens,” McFarland told NBC News.
“Thankfully, we have good partners who will make sure they’re safe and obviously make sure things work out.”
However, McFarland knows that his second go at the infamously botched music festival “has to work”—or his reputation risks being further damaged.
“It’s going to be very hard to get other opportunities, whether that’s a marketing job, a podcast appearance, a TV show, or a relationship,” McFarland told WSJ.
“People are going to be hard-pressed to trust me if I put it all on the line and fail at it twice.”
