KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 10 — Fyre Festival 2 is “confirmed” — and an investor who lost his US$1 million (RM4.35 million) investment is sounding the alarm.
Disgraced founder Billy McFarland, had claimed in a new interview with NBC News yesterday that his second attempt at the event will return in April 2025.
Fyre Festival in April 2017 promised a luxury experience on a private island in the Bahamas with top entertainment.
Instead, it was a disaster that played out in real time online where attendees who paid thousands for tickets were left without a concert, sleeping in tents and eating cheese sandwiches in takeaway boxes.
Despite promising attendees the chance to rub shoulders with celebrities in a luxurious setting on a private island, nothing was as described.
Blink 182, Major Lazer, Disclosure, Pusha T, Tyga, Migos and other acts did not appear onstage while celebrities like Kendall Jenner, Hailey Bieber, and Bella Hadid were not present.
McFarland ended up in jail on a federal fraud conviction. and ordered to pay back the US$26 million (RM113 million) he took from his investors and spent four years behind bars before he was released on probation in 2022.
He however insists that the sequel will happen, saying that Fyre Festival 2 “is happening April 25, 2025, so we’re seven and a half months away.
“We have a private island off the coast of Mexico in the Caribbean, and we have an incredible production company who’s handling everything from soup to nuts.”
Missing however were details.
No island was named, and no musical acts have been booked.
McFarland also told NBC News‘ Today that music won’t be the core focus of Fyre Festival 2 but will include other forms of “entertainment”.
“It’s not going to be just music — for example, karate combat. We’re in talks with them to set up a pit to have, like, live fights at Fyre Festival 2.”
He also promised a different experience this time around.
“It’s not about 10,000 people staring at a stage with their hands in the air. It’s about getting on a plane with six people — two might be your friends, three might be people you met that morning — and going and exploring an island or a beach or a reef that you didn’t even know existed until you got in the airplane.”
McFarland hopes to draw in 3,000 people for the three-day event where ticket prices will range from US$1,400 (RM6,100) on the low end to US$1.1million (RM4.8 million) for the most expensive package, which will reportedly include luxury yachts, scuba diving and island hopping.
Despite the debacle that was the original event, pre-sale tickets to Fyre Festival 2 have sold out despite the fact that the festival has no line-up, venue, or dates fixed for the event.
McFarland claims he spent a year planning it, and had already sold 100 tickets at an 'early bird' rate of US$499 (RM4,343).
An investor in the first Fyre Festival issued a warning to anyone interested in going to its planned reboot.
Andy King, who lost his US$1 million (RM4.35 million) in the original debacle, told BBC that McFarland was “known for the biggest failure in pop culture and wants to flip the script. But I'm not sure he's going about it the right way.”
The 63-year-old South-Carolina-based event planner met McFarland several months ago to discuss Fyre II but he feared his former business partner hadn't “learned a lot in prison... he's shooting from the hip again”.
“Billy has a gift. He's got a lot of charisma. He knows how to pull people in.
“Think about it: when he was 24, he walked in to investment banking firms in New York and got them to invest US$29m (RM126 million).”
He added that Fyre Festival 2 could be a “huge success” — but if McFarland is “running the show again, it won't work”.
King who never got a cent from his investment back, said he was contacted by McFarland to meet investors in the new venture.
“We were going to rent one of the biggest estates in the Hamptons and have a big, swanky party. We ended up having 30 people at a pizza place along the Montauk highway.”
Subsequent calls were cancelled and he hadn't heard from McFarland in seven or eight months.
