‘My dream is finally becoming a reality’

In a surprising turn of events, Billy McFarland, the mastermind behind the disastrous Fyre Festival, is bringing the infamous event back. Dubbed Fyre Festival 2, the revived festival is set to take place from May 30 to June 2 on Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

Despite the catastrophic failure of the first festival in 2017 — which led to multiple lawsuits, McFarland’s prison sentence and two tell-all documentaries — the founder remains optimistic about this new version.

“Fyre 2 is real. My dream is finally becoming a reality,” he told Today in an interview that aired Monday. “Fyre 2 really isn’t about the past, and it’s not really about me. It’s about taking the vision, which is strong.”

Citing new management of the company, McFarland insists that this time will be different. While no artists have been confirmed, he claims he expects to book A-list performers in the coming months.

“We’re going to have artists across electronic, hip-hop, pop and rock,” McFarland said. “However, it’s not just music. We might have a professional skateboarder do a demonstration. We might have an MMA champion teach you techniques in the morning.”

Here’s everything you need to know about the return of the Fyre Festival and how McFarland is trying to rewrite its legacy.

McFarland’s vision for and involvement in Fyre 2

This year’s festival will be capped at 2,000 attendees, significantly fewer than the estimated 5,000 festivalgoers who bought tickets to the disastrous 2017 event (only around 500 actually made landfall on the festival grounds).

McFarland is stepping away from operational responsibilities this time, handing them over to “a major festival operator,” reports Today. Hotel and travel partners, along with the online ticketing platform Soldout.com, have been brought on to handle other logistics.

As McFarland told Today, the festival won’t just be about music. According to its website, attendees can expect “water adventures, extreme sports, leisure & wellness [and] cultural & creative activities.”

A minimum of $500,000 from festival proceeds will go toward McFarland’s more than $26 million restitution payments. Since his release from prison, he has reportedly contributed a percentage of his salary from a marketing job toward these payments, per Today. Additionally, he and his partners have committed to donating 10% of their profits to restitution efforts.

As part of his legal penalties, McFarland is barred from holding the position of a director of a public company — although this venture is privately owned.

McFarland acknowledges that relaunching Fyre Festival comes with risks, particularly given his past failures.

“It’s 2,000 people taking the risk, seeking the adventure and wanting to be there for the moment,” he told Today. “You’re taking a risk, because I’ve made a lot of bad decisions and messed up the first festival. Until it’s experienced, there is a risk component to it.”

However, it remains unclear whether McFarland will be allowed to attend the festival himself, due to travel restrictions.

“I have to be okay with, mentally, maybe watching a live stream from my computer and crying a little bit,” he told Today. “I have to ask [the court] for international travel.”

How much are tickets and what does it get you?

Tickets for Fyre 2 are now on sale, ranging from $1,400 to $1.1 million, depending on the package. Here’s what each tier includes:

Tickets can be purchased directly through Fyre 2’s website or SoldOut.com, the only verified resale platform. The site warns, “Fyre is not responsible for any purchases made outside of SoldOut.com.”

The disaster of Fyre Festival 2017

The original Fyre Festival took place in April 2017 and reportedly cost upward of $12,000 per ticket. It promised to be an ultra-luxurious music festival in the Bahamas with gourmet food, celebrity appearances and performances from top artists like Blink-182 and Major Lazer. Prominent influencers and models like Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratajkowski and Kendall Jenner promoted it on social media. Rapper Ja Rule served as one of its lead organizers.

The reality, however, was far from what was promised. Instead of gourmet food, the roughly 500 attendees were served takeaway cheese sandwiches. “Luxury” accommodations were replaced with disaster-relief tents that were reportedly left over from Hurricane Matthew. None of the pre-booked performances took place, and chaos ensued. Hundreds of attendees didn’t have a place to sleep, and many of them reportedly had their belongings stolen due to lack of security.

The costly aftermath

By March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to six years in prison, later admitting that he “knowingly lied” to attendees and investors. He served nearly four years before his release in March 2022, though he was placed on a six-month house arrest.

Attendees eventually won a class-action lawsuit, getting a paltry $281 each, according to the BBC. Ja Rule was absolved of any personal liability, but Jenner was ordered to pay $90,000 for her involvement in promoting the ill-fated festival.

Employees posted scathing accounts of their experience, with one describing it as “incompetence on an almost inconceivable scale.”

For his part, McFarland offered public apologies both during his prison sentence and after his release. Reflecting on his actions, he told the New York Times in September 2022, “I deserved my sentence. I let a lot of people down,” attributing his poor decisions to “immaturity.”

McFarland is not allowed to leave New York without an officer’s permission, he told the Wall Street Journal, and will remain on probation until August.

Fyre documentaries and public scrutiny

The Fyre Festival’s failure was immortalized in two popular documentaries: Netflix’s Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Hulu’s Fyre Fraud. Both films highlighted McFarland’s reckless decision-making and deceit in the lead-up to the festival.

These films, along with an Oscars joke and several late-night jabs, turned Fyre Fest into a pop-culture phenomenon and a cautionary tale. They also sparked broader discussions about the dangers of blindly trusting social media influencers and the impact they have on consumer behavior.

The road to redemption

McFarland hinted about a festival reboot as early as December 2022. In August 2023, he announced on YouTube that tickets had gone on sale. It was later reported that those tickets were limited to 100 presale VIP tickets, costing $499 each, and sold out days later — which he reiterated on Monday’s interview with Today.

McFarland says he plans to use any negative publicity for his benefit.

“We have the chance to embrace this storm and really steer our ship into all the chaos that has happened,” he previously told Today in September 2024. “If it’s done well, I think Fyre has a chance to be this annual festival that really takes over the festival industry.”

Andy King, an event planner involved in the original festival who went viral after revealing that McFarland had asked him to give a customs official oral sex to retrieve an order of water bottles, confirmed in August 2023 that he’s returning for Fyre Festival 2. In a September 2024 interview with the Wall Street Journal, King said he’d only return if an outside company took control.

While McFarland has acknowledged the hurt caused by the first Fyre Festival, he’s betting on the festival’s past notoriety to turn it into a long-term event.

“I want 90 percent of the people saying, ‘This is not real, it’s never going to happen,’” McFarland told the Wall Street Journal last year. “We’re betting that it’s going to make the 10 percent who can afford it to be like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to show them.”