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It’s been more than eight years since Fyre Festival crashed and burned, and an attempt to revitalize the ill-fated venture recently met a similar fate after Billy McFarland attempted to resurrect it in Mexico. Now, it appears he’s officially waving the white flag, although anyone who thinks they might be able to capitalize on the toxic brand can try to secure the rights to it on eBay.
In 2018, the internet was treated to Peak Schadenfreude courtesy of Fyre Festival, the disastrous gathering that lured hundreds of people to an island in the Bahamas before they were subjected to the millennial version of Lord of the Flies while chronicling the debacle on social media.
There was plenty of blame to go around, but the bulk of it ultimately rested on the shoulders of Billy McFarland, the co-founder and fraudster who was ultimately sentenced to six years and prison and ordered to pay $26 million to compensate the investors and attendees he scammed before the house of cards he’d constructed collapsed in spectacular fashion.
McFarland was released in 2022 and hinted it was only a matter of time until he attempted to bring Fyre Festival back from the dead.
He tried to do exactly that with a rebooted version that was supposed to be held in Mexico this year, but the event—which featured tickets ranging from $1,400 to $1.1 million—was called off after officials in two different cities where it was purportedly being held said they had no knowledge of its existence.
At this point, it doesn’t seem like the Fyre Festival brand is something most people would want to be associated with when you consider the amount of controversy it’s been mired in. However, that hasn’t stopped a bidding war from unfolding after McFarland opted to list the rights to it on eBay.
On Monday, a listing titled “Own FYRE Festival – Iconic Brand, Trademarks, IP, Social Media Assets, and More” appeared on the auction site with a starting price of a single penny, and as of this writing, it’s already received more than 100 bids that have driven up the current one to a little over $200,000.
The description asserts the winner will get not “just a name” but rather a “global attention engine” complete with the rights to the Fyre Festival trademark, all preexisting social media accounts and domain names, marketing assets, and access to the email addresses and phone numbers of people who’ve willingly shared theirs with the brand in the past.
The auction is currently slated to end on July 15th, and it’ll be very interesting to see what the final offer ends up being.
Content shared from brobible.com.