You’d assume that spending seven months in a jail cell would make you think long and hard about your wrongdoings. Billy McFarland, the co-founder of the notorious Fyre Festival that resulted in several class action lawsuits (with one seeking more than $100 million in damages), certainly did.
Although not exactly in the way you’d hope. Instead of atoning for defrauding inventors out of $26 million, bankrupting his Bahamian vendors, and for joking about all this on a podcast while still in prison, McFarland spent the time scheming on how to capitalise on this botched viral sensation.
As per a TikTok posted yesterday, he spent his time inside “writing a 50-page plan of how I would take this overall interest and demand in FYRE... how I would find the best partners in the world to allow me to be me, while executing FYRE’s vision to the highest level.”
The result of this 50-page plan is — brace yourself — Fyre Festival II, with tickets officially going on sale today.
So far there’s no lineup, only an approximation of the location (somewhere in the Caribbean, mind you, there’s more than 700 islands in the region), and a target for the date (towards the end of 2024). The only thing we know is the ticket price, which is $499 (about £391). There are also other tiers “coming soon” that will range from $799 – $7,999.
The original Fyre Festival, which is now the subject of two popular Hulu and Netflix documentaries, was conceptualised six years ago by McFarland and rapper Ja Rule (the latter of whom has been quick to state that he has absolutely no involvement with the follow-up). Sold as an ultra-luxury music festival via glamorous promotional videos starring Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Kendall Jenner, and other famous supermodels, it promised headliners like Blink 182, Pusha T, and Major Lazer, “exclusive villas” as accommodation, and celebrity chefs behind the all-inclusive catering. Instead, arrivals were welcomed to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) tents, limp cheese sandwiches, and a cancelled line-up.
As a result of the debacle, McFarland was sentenced to six years in federal prison on two counts of wire fraud in March 2018. As forJa Rule, he escaped prosecution and played a much smaller role in the resulting media storm — only appearing in an interview with Revolt TV in 2018.
Having been released early from prison in May 2022, McFarland was then held under house arrest until September that year. But it didn’t take him long to start plotting his next ventures.
McFarland began teasing followers that he was up to something by tweeting the eyes emoji on Twitter (now rebranded as X) back in April. He then started sharing other deranged plans, like a Broadway musical filled with music artists making fun of him, dubbed Fyre Fest 1.5. As well as a Bahamas treasure hunt venture, called “PYRT”, which was expected to be the subject of a not-yet-released documentary titled After The Fyre currently being produced by Ample Entertainment.
However, both of these pale in significance to an actual remake of the Fyre Festival. If you want to go (and that’s on you) then you can purchase your ticket at https://posh.vip/e/fyre. But don’t say we didn’t warn you.
