Stories of downfall don’t always leave room for redemption, but Billy McFarland has announced his plan to reverse the fortunes of 2017’s ill-fated Fyre Festival in early 2025.
Speaking with NBC News‘ Savannah Sellers on TODAY, McFarland officially announced Fyre Festival II, which he says is set to take place in April on a private island in the Caribbean off the coast of Mexico.
With lessons learned, McFarland says he’s making changes in an effort to rebuild the most infamous brand in festival culture. The event, spanning three days, will aim to lean on existing infrastructure for lodging and services. He also stated that Fyre has contracted the services of an outside production company to manage the logistics, the name of which he will reveal at a later stage.
Following McFarland’s guilty plea on wire fraud charges, he was released from jail in 2022. However, he still owes restitution to employees and investors of the original Fyre Festival to the tune of approximately $26 million. Ergo, the stakes seemingly could not be higher this time around.
“Fyre II has to work,” McFarland recently told the Wall Street Journal.
McFarland, however, remains cognizant of the fact that it’s unlikely the totality of his financial debt will be wiped clean in one fell swoop.
“It’s hard because this is the deeper issue, where there are people who were legitimately hurt and let down from Fyre I, whether that was an employee and a family of a member of an employee, a ticket-holder,” he told Sellers on TODAY. ‘So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to repay those people. I don’t think it’s practical. I don’t actually think it’s right to try to do all that in the first year. I think that would lead to short term decisions.”
Despite the debacle of the original Fyre Festival on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma, it appears thousands of consumers are still willing to place their trust in McFarland’s vision for Fyre II. Just 10 hours after the announcement, he revealed that applications had been submitted for over 5,000 tickets, noting the event will only accommodate 3,000 attendees total. A sliding scale of ticket packages will start from $1,400 all the way up to a jaw-dropping $1.1 million per ticket.
Prospective ticket-buyers can submit their application here. Fyre Festival II is scheduled to take place April 25-28, 2025.
EXCLUSIVE: Billy McFarland reveals date and location for Fyre Festival II
“Fyre Festival II is happening April 25, 2025, so we’re seven and a half months away,” he told @watchsavannah. “We have a private island off the coast of Mexico in the Caribbean." pic.twitter.com/Qw5gq9NTNA
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 9, 2024