Co-founder Ja Rule - pictured with McFarland - was cleared of wrongdoing, but faced many lawsuits related to the festival. Photo / Netflix
Co-founder Ja Rule - pictured with McFarland - was cleared of wrongdoing, but faced many lawsuits related to the festival. Photo / Netflix
‘Shambolic’, ‘catastrophic’, ‘scam’ and ‘chaos’ are just some of the words which have been used to describe Fyre Festival, which was billed as a luxury music experience on an expensive private island in the Bahamas.
The 2017 event has been cemented in infamy after failing spectacularly in the hands of a brash entrepreneur named Billy McFarland.
Still – a four-year prison term for fraud and two documentaries later – Fyre might return for a mulligan.
“Fyre Festival II is finally happening,” McFarland, a convicted fraudster, recently declared on Twitter.
Attendees for the inaugural festival, some of whom paid up to $17,900 ($19,008) for tickets, were promised an immersive music experience with artists including Pusha T, Tyga and Skepta, as well as the opportunity to rub shoulders with Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber – all of whom never made it to the event.
“[It will be] two transformative weekends, the best in food, art, music and adventure, on the boundaries of the impossible,” promotional content for the doomed festival promised.
Tickets included VIP flights and luxury villa accommodation, with big spenders offered the chance to hang out with performers.
But come the opening weekend, hundreds were left stranded and starving with soggy mattresses and dilapidated Fema tents.
The dream event quickly became a nightmare as attendees live-tweeted the peril.
Attendees were promised luxury accommodations but instead were left stranded, starving and in poor conditions. Photo / Netflix
Fyre Festival had been instead characterised by long lines for registration, scraps over the dodgy tents and bland, poor-quality meals – and even attendees being locked in an airport terminal without food, water or air conditioning.
The result? A flurry of lawsuits, years in jail for its founder and two documentaries – one a Netflix hit – exposing the shambles.
Food at the original Fyre Festival was shocking. Photo / Netflix
Organisers blamed poor weather and “circumstances out of our control” for much of the chaos, and it was later revealed that the festival’s top musical acts pulled out days before the event due to a lack of payment.
McFarland served four years of a six-year prison sentence for wire fraud relating to his role in financing the original festival.
Fyre Festival failed spectacularly in 2017 due to poor planning and fraud by its founder, Billy McFarland. Photo / Netflix
“Tell me why you shouldn’t be in jail,” one of the thousands of respondents to his tweeted announcement said.
“It’s in the best interest of those I owe for me to be working. People aren’t getting paid back if I sit on the couch and watch TV … and because I served my time,” McFarland responded, referencing the fact he still owes creditors $39 million.
