The long-plagued Fyre Festival has been sold to LimeWire, the Austria-based technology company that became famous during the early 2000s for illegal file sharing and music piracy.
LimeWire president Julian Zehetmayr tells Billboard that the company was purchased by a new management team in 2021 and now focuses on digital content sharing through decentralized infrastructure, comparing LimeWire to firms like WeTransfer.
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“What could possibly go wrong?” reads the company’s press release announcing the purchase of the beleaguered festival, which famously promised a VIP experience with the help of top influencers and instead left hundreds of fans temporarily trapped on Grand Exuma island in 2017. Billy McFarland masterminded the event, according to the FBI, convincing fans to shell out thousands for luxury accommodations that turned out to be emergency tents and gourmet meals that were little more than cheese sandwiches.
McFarland went to prison after admitting to stealing $26 million from investors for the event and has been working to repay them since being released in 2022 after serving four years of his six-year sentence. While serving in solitary confinement, McFarland came up with the idea for a sequel to Fyre, which he had hoped would repair his image, and bounced around different sites in the Bahamas and Mexico before landing on Playa del Carmen near Cancun. McFarland ultimately hired Mexican firm Lost Nights to produce the event and staged a press conference on March 27 with local officials to highlight it.
However, things went south in April when city leaders from Playa del Carmen announced that no permits for Fyre Festival had been issued in the seaside town. McFarland responded by releasing images of permits that he said proved Fyre was happening, but he later pulled the plug on the event and refunded ticket holders.
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In June, McFarland announced that he had licensed the Fyre name to hotel owner Heath Miller to stage a scuba-diving-centric event in Honduras. The following month, he announced he was selling the brand name through an online auction, generating $245,000.
Earlier today, McFarland revealed that LimeWire was the winning bidder, beating out a competing bid from creative agency Maximum Effort, co-founded by Ryan Reynolds. LimeWire did license the name to Maximum Effort for a Visa commercial, which can be seen below.
Reynolds commented in a press release, “Congrats to LimeWire for their winning bid for Fyre Fest. I look forward to attending their first event but will be bringing my own palette of water.”
Zehetmayr didn’t detail LimeWire’s plans for Fyre but said he’s interested in staging some type of in-person event in the future. McFarland will not be involved in Fyre going forward, Zehetmayr says.
“The goal is to host some type of event but not aim too big,” he said, adding, “Like LimeWire, Fyre came from an infamous and notorious past and we look forward to the challenge of turning it around.”
LimeWire was launched in 2000 by technologist Mark Gorton as a peer-to-peer file sharing service that exploded in popularity during that decade. In 2010, a federal judge issued an injunction, effectively shutting down most of the service’s major capabilities following a lawsuit by Arista Records. The Recording Industry Association of America eventually won a $105 million judgment against LimeWire, leading the company to stop updating its software.
“Over the coming months, LimeWire will unveil a reimagined vision for Fyre — one that expands beyond the digital realm and taps into real-world experiences, community, and surprise,” a press release announcing the purchase reads. “While the details are still under wraps, expect the unexpected. Fyre’s revival will be bold, self-aware, and impossible to ignore — staying true to its chaotic legacy, but with a new layer of credibility, creativity, and control.”
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