Billy McFarland, the man behind the infamous Fyre Festival fiasco, has confirmed that plans for a second event have officially been scrapped — and he’s now putting the festival’s name up for sale.
The original Fyre Festival was billed as an exclusive luxury experience on a Caribbean island, complete with top musical acts and celebrity guests.
Instead, the reality was chaos - performers like Blink-182 and Migos pulled out, guests arrived to find disaster relief tents and were served basic cheese sandwiches in polystyrene boxes.
The failed event quickly became a global punchline, inspiring two rival documentaries and leading to McFarland’s conviction for wire fraud. He still owes $26 million in restitution.
The 32-year-old entrepreneur, who spent four years in prison for fraud related to the disastrous 2017 event, posted a statement to the Fyre Festival website announcing the cancellation of Fyre Festival 2, which had been scheduled to take place on Isla Mujeres, Mexico, from May 30 to June 2.
Ticket holders were told they would be refunded after the event was postponed indefinitely last week.
McFarland said he is now “ready to sell” the rights to the Fyre Festival brand.
He added that while he had identified a potential new location for the event outside of Mexico, he couldn’t risk another public collapse like the one in Playa Del Carmen, where he claimed support quickly vanished once media attention ramped up.
“I can't risk a repeat of what happened in Playa Del Carmen, where support quickly turned into public distancing once media attention intensified,” he wrote.
He continued in his statement: “When my team and I launched Fyre Festival 2, it was about two things: finishing what I started and making things right.”
“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.
“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.”
Despite this, McFarland announced Fyre Festival 2 last year with bold claims that he was bringing the brand back.
Tickets went on sale in February, starting at $1,400 and soaring up to $25,000. Premium packages were reportedly offered for as much as $1.1 million.
“I’m sure many people think I’m crazy for doing this again,” McFarland said at the time. “But I feel I’d be crazy not to do it again.”
