Billy McFarland’s infamous Fyre Festival brand has been sold to a bidder on eBay for just under a quarter of a million dollars – find out more below.
- READ MORE: The 10 most WTF moments from Netflix’s jaw-dropping Fyre Festival documentary
Earlier this week, McFarland placed the Fyre Festival brand up for sale on the auctioning platform after an alleged seven-figure deal recently fell through. The auction has now closed, with the winning bidder paying US$245,300 for the brand and its intellectual property (IP) – check out the listing here.
Also included in the Fyre Festival sale are the brand’s trademarks, social media assets and more. Following the confirmation of the bid, disgraced founder and convicted fraudster Billy McFarland shared a statement on social media: “I look forward to working with them to begin with process to finalise the sale. Fyre Festival is just one chapter of my story, and I’m excited to move onto my next one.”
McFarland continued: “The auction became the most-watched non-charity listing on eBay during its run, proving once again that attention is currency, and views are the root of attention. That belief is at the core of what I’m building next.”
The founder then shared that he’s working on a “tech platform designed to capture and power the value behind every view online,” and told followers that it’s “coming soon”.
The original Fyre Festival was first developed by McFarland eight years ago, and was planned to run over two weekends on a private beach in the Bahamas. That edition in 2017 was reportedly set to include performances from Blink-182, Major Lazer, Disclosure, Migos, Pusha T, Tyga and more.
It made headlines when it was revealed to be fraudulent, with punters arriving on the scene and facing inadequate conditions and a lack of food and water. The ordeal was then captured in the now-iconic Netflix documentary FYRE.
McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 for defrauding investors and was released after just four years in 2022. Fyre Fest 2 was originally set to run between May 30 and June 2 on an island in Mexico, before the tourism board and local officials claimed that no such festival existed.
In February, it was announced that the second edition of the festival would be taking place on a tropical island off Cancún, Mexico. However, it was soon revealed that the permit McFarland had obtained only allowed for a 12-hour listening party that must have fewer than 300 people.
Before it was cancelled, the second edition of Fyre Fest saw tickets sell for between $1,400 and $25,000 (£1,081-£19,305), while premium packages were priced as high as $1.1million (£850,000). Ahead of the planned second instalment, former Fyre Festival investor Andy King warned of “a lot of red flags” over the event’s planned reboot.
The deal that recently fell though appeared to be one that was announced back in April, when documentarian Shawn Rech revealed that he had acquired some of the Fyre Fest brand’s IP and was planning to launch a streaming service using the name. In May, it was revealed that the Fyre Festival brand was looking to launch a hotel experience later this year, marketed as a Caribbean getaway in Honduras in September.