To see what’s happening with Fyre Festival 2, it’s a good idea to look at the first Fyre Fest, which was in 2017. The concept of the first festival was started in 2016 by Manhattanite Billy McFarland. Along with rapper Ja Rule (Jeffrey Atkins). The two coined the idea of blending music, gourmet meals, and highly extravagant island accommodations on a beautiful Caribbean isle. After multiple changes of venue, musical acts, and budget reduction, the festival was a disaster.
First Fyre Festival Failures
Patrons paid anywhere from $500-$1500 for day tickets. Alternatively, luxury accommodations could be made for a special “geodesic dome,” which sold for $12,000. (To be fair, the tents were dome-shaped.) Around 5000 tickets were said to be sold, and approximately 500 people showed up on the island. Unfortunately, besides the tent issue, the gourmet food turned out to be a cheese sandwich thrown in a clamshell to-go container. They were garnished with lettuce and a tomato for a pop of color.
The interactions with celebrities and influencers did not happen. The music lineup promised included Pusha-T, Major Lazer, Lee Burridge, Blink-182, Tyga, Tensnake, and Kaytranada, to name a few. The few musicians scheduled pulled out, and Comcast Ventures, which was going to do some of the funding, could not reach an agreement with McFarland.
To further muddy the waters, there was a lack of running water, a severe shortage of portable toilets, no medical personnel, and no internet service. The grand “luxury accommodations” simply didn’t happen. Either the weather situation wasn’t taken into account or completely ignored, as the festival site was soaked with heavy April rains. And those geodesic tents? They contained soaked mattresses on a dirt floor.
Billy McFarland, the Fyre Fest Felon
McFarland spent several years in prison after being convicted of wire fraud. Even then, he maintained that he would again attempt to bring together music, influencers, and tropical accommodations in the future. Fyre Festival 2 was soon born. After his 2022 release from prison, McFarland started to plan the next year for Fyre Festival 2.
Frantic Fyre Festival 2 Formation
There’s an old saying that many of us have heard that goes something like “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Regardless of the abysmal failure of the first festival, would people actually want to buy into a second one, the Fyre Festival 2? Billy McFarland seems to think so. After several attempts to book a venue, he appeared to have found one on Isla Mujeres, an island just off the coast of Mexico, for Fyre Festival 2. Tickets, at that point, looked like they were ranging from $1400 up to a whopping $1.1 million.
Isla Mujeres, in a scathing statement, said that there was no festival and that Billy McFarland had failed to obtain necessary permits for this event. Currently, the event looks like it’s postponed indefinitely. This is not a bad thing, considering the number of issues that happened with the first one.
A Few Final Thoughts
Even if Fyre Festival 2 were to be the phoenix and rise from the ashes of the first one, Billy McFarland has shown a stunning lack of ability to plan. In regard to large events, necessary permits are the first items to get in place, then secure the musical acts, promoters, catering (with potable water), and ultimately, precautions like event security and medical personnel. If any of these things were done, it was haphazardly.
In 2019, two documentaries were made regarding the first Fyre Festival. If you want to further check it out, you could either watch Netflix’s film, “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” or the Hulu one, simply titled “Fyre Fraud.”
