Fyre Festival

The Fyre Festival was supposed to be a luxury music festival taking place in April and May of 2017 on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma. The festival was founded by Billy McFarland, former CEO of Fyre Media Inc., and rapper Ja Rule. The festival was designed to promote Fyre Media’s newest app for booking music talent. The event was promoted by a number of high-profile celebrities such as Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid. However, when guests arrived on the island, they discovered that many of the touted luxury accommodations they had paid thousands of dollars for were nowhere to be found. Lodging had not been set up properly and mattresses still in their packaging were dispersed around the island. Food was scarce and there was no running water. A number of musical acts also dropped out of the festival days before it was scheduled to begin. Eventually, festival coordinators decided to cancel the event and postpone it indefinitely. In the months following, McFarland and Ja Rule were the subject of multiple lawsuits seeking damages for what was labeled a fraudulent event. In 2018, McFarland was convicted of one count of wire fraud to defraud investors and ticket holders and a second count to defraud a ticket vendor.

Background

The Fyre Festival was organized by entrepreneur Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule. The pair had first met at an event for McFarland’s previous venture Magnises, an invite-only credit card company. McFarland later founded Fyre Media, Inc. in 2016 and began building the Fyre app, which was designed to pair musical artists with vendors. During a trip McFarland and Ja Rule took to the Bahamas, their flight touched down on a small island called Norman’s Cay, which was once owned by a prominent figure in the Medellin Drug Cartel. After some plotting between Ja Rule and him, McFarland decided to lease the island from its owners. The pair thought it would be the perfect place to hold a music festival promoting the Fyre app. The owners agreed on the condition that McFarland never mention the island’s drug connections while marketing the event.

McFarland soon hired a number of prominent social media influencers to promote what he and Ja Rule named the Fyre Festival. The event was to take place between April and May of 2017. The company released a promotional video featuring Instagram models such as Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski in early 2017. The ad touted the island’s drug cartel connections, prompting the island’s owners to immediately terminate the lease with McFarland. The lease termination occurred only four months before the festival was scheduled to begin. McFarland spent the next two months searching for a replacement island, eventually getting permission to use a spot on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma near a Sandals Resort. However, McFarland continued to promote the festival as if it were still occurring on Norman’s Cay, however, altering maps of the destination posted to the event website to make it look like the location was secluded. The website boasted about guests having access to luxury villas and meals made by celebrity chefs, listing several dozen musical acts on its lineup.

McFarland never announced changes to the festival’s location to those who had already purchased tickets. With only two months left to organize accommodations for guests, the festival was scheduled to take place in a parking lot close to the Sandals Resort. The Fyre team was now running low on funds, so McFarland was forced to seek out investments and take out loans. Ticket sales also failed to meet expectations, so cash flow was low. Many of the event’s luxury accommodations were no longer affordable. The festival’s high-end catering company also pulled out of its contract due to the organizer’s inability to pay its bill. Despite multiple people telling McFarland and other organizers that the event could not be pulled off as planned in the small amount of time available, the group refused to postpone the festival.

Overview

The event began as scheduled on April 27, 2017. Early that morning, heavy rains swept over the island, soaking through the tents and piled up mattresses meant for guest accommodations. One of the bands, Blink-182, also pulled out of the festival at the last minute, citing a lack of confidence in the festival’s ability to host their musical act. By this point, accommodations for the already arrived guests were still not ready. Guests were dropped at a beachside restaurant where they waited for several hours while workers frantically attempted to prepare the site for visitors. When guests were eventually taken to the festival site, they were made aware of the true state of events. FEMA disaster relief tents were hastily constructed to house attendees. Many of the mattresses were soaked through due to the rain. Food offerings were nowhere near the level advertised on the website and instead of gourmet meals, staff handed out low-quality food items such as cheese sandwiches in foam containers.

It soon became clear that there were not enough tents for all the guests. Chaos ensued as attendees attempted to claim tents for themselves. The location also lacked cell phone service, medical personnel, security, and running water. The event was also promoted as a cashless event, so many guests had no money to pay for anything outside the festival. Many more musical acts dropped out soon after guests began arriving. Nearby resorts such as Sandals were fully booked due to a sporting event taking place that week, so the guests were stranded and forced to wait for hours while organizers decided how to proceed. The next morning, McFarland and his partners announced that the festival was being postponed and chartered flights were being booked to escort guests off the island. The flight plans also resulted in chaos, with a number of guests finding themselves stuck in the Exuma Airport terminal without food or water.

The Fyre Festival website soon posted a statement announcing intentions to postpone the event and accommodate disappointed attendees. Co-organizer Ja Rule also issued a statement claiming to be unaware of the event’s lack of organization. In the months to follow, a slew of lawsuits flooded the Fyre Festival organizers, and McFarland and Ja Rule were banned from the Bahamas for life. McFarland was later arrested on charges of wire fraud and a class-action lawsuit was brought against him for $100 million. In October 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison for wire fraud and defrauding festival-goers and investors.

Two documentaries about the organization and inevitable downfall of the festival were released in 2019: Hulu’s Fyre Fraud and Netflix’s Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. While many of the festivals Bahamian suppliers were not paid, a crowdfunding appeal in 2019 raised over $200,000 for one of the caterers who worked the event. In 2020, the US Marshals Service auctioned Fyre Festival branded merchandise, with the proceeds going to the victims.

Bibliography

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Wamsley, Laurel. “Paradise Lost: Luxury Music Festival Turns Out to Be Half-Built Scene of Chaos.” NPR, 28 Apr. 2017, www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/28/526019457/paradise-lost-luxury-music-festival-turns-out-to-be-half-built-scene-of-chaos. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.