Billy McFarland, who was infamously described by Vanity Fair as “the poster boy for millennial scamming,” has announced that the first drop of pre-sale tickets to Fyre Festival II are sold out.
The first Fyre Festival was held in the Bahamas in 2017. It was co-launched by McFarland with rapper Ja Rule. It was promoted by A-list celebrities as a luxury music event but ended in disaster when attendees revealed on social media that everything from on-site accommodations to food had serious issues.
Like the first edition, Fyre Festival II will be held in the Caribbean in 2024 but there is no confirmation on the venue. According to McFarland, the exact details, including line-up, will be revealed later.
More about Fyre Festival II, as revealed by McFarland
On 22 August, McFarland revealed that pre-sale tickets have been sold out.
“This time we have incredible support. I’ll be doing what I love while working with the best logistical and infrastructure partners. In addition, all ticket sale revenue will be held in escrow until the final date is announced,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter), announcing that the first drop had been sold.
“We look forward to surprising the world alongside our partners as we build FYRE and FYRE Festival II into the island adventure of a lifetime,” he added.
The first FYRE Festival II drop has sold out.
Since 2016 FYRE has been the most talked about festival in the world. We now saw this convert to one of the highest priced GA pre-sales in the industry.
FYRE is about people from the around the world coming together to pull off…
— Billy McFarland (@pyrtbilly) August 22, 2023
The official website of the festival also says that the first drop of 100 tickets have been sold out. It says that other packages and “VIP Passes” ranging from USD 799 to USD 7,999 are coming soon. It also specifies that the date of the event is 6 December 2024, but does not reveal any other details.
In a video posted on 20 August, McFarland said that he arrived on the decision to host the festival once again after speaking to “people as far away as the Middle East and South America.”
“It has been the absolute wildest journey to get here, and it really all started during a seventh-month stint in solitary confinement. I wrote out this 50-page plan of how it would take this overall interest and demand in Fyre and how it would take my ability to bring people from around the world together to make the impossible happen,” he said.
FYRE Festival II is LIVE
🔗 in bio pic.twitter.com/3LMEhCUVaC
— Billy McFarland (@pyrtbilly) August 20, 2023
He added that a documentary on the first festival, titled After the Fyre, is in the works along with a Broadway musical.
McFarland made the announcement of the return of the Fyre Festival in April. But, according to PEOPLE, Ja Rule said he knows “nothing about it” and won’t be involved.
Who is Billy McFarland?
Billy McFarland was convicted in 2018 for defrauding investors and leading a ticket-selling scam in the first Fyre Festival and sentenced to six years in prison. He was released in 2022 and sent to a halfway house in New York.
He then addressed the disaster in an appearance on Good Morning America in November 2022, saying, “I let people down. I let down employees. I let down their families. I let down investors. So I need to apologize. I’m wrong and it’s bad.”
Netflix’s FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Hulu’s Fyre Fraud were two 2019 documentaries that were made on the disastrous first event. But both were criticised after it was revealed that the co-producers of one were involved in the festival while the other platform paid McFarland for an appearance.
(Hero and Featured images: Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
