The second Fyre Festival has officially been announced, nearly 10 years since the first infamous event quickly turned into a disaster.
The failed festival in 2017 hit headlines after charging guests up to $100,000 per head to travel to the island of Great Exuma in the Bahamas, but failing to deliver the white sands, luxury accommodation and first-class food that was promised.
It even led to co-organiser Billy McFarland serving nearly four years of a six-year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges relating to the festival and various fraud charges stemming from a separate ticket-selling scam.
Read more: Fyre Festival: What happened in 2017
Plans for Fyre II have been on and off since 2023, but this is the furthest it has ever come, with the event set for 30 May to 2 June and 2,000 tickets officially having gone on sale earlier this week.
Relaunching the festival, Mr McFarland told Sky News’ US partner NBC News that Fyre II is “not about the past” but about “taking the vision, which is strong”.
Unlike the original festival, Fyre said in a statement that live event organiser Lostnights has signed up to handle the details, along with hotel, travel and ticketing companies also coming on board to help plan and organise the event.
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One thing that has not changed is ticket costs, with prices ranging from $1,400 (£1,100) to an eye watering $1.1m (£869,000).
The website states that the top-tier ticket – named the Prometheus package – gets eight people into the festival as well as the option to stay on a yacht, have a 24/7 private chauffeur, access to one of the stages as well as exclusive “additional experiences”.
“You will be on a boat, have the luxury yachts that we partner with who will be docked and parked outside the island,” Mr McFarland told NBC’s Today show.
“But once again, Fyre is not just about this, like, luxury experience,” he added. “It’s about the adventure. So you’ll be scuba diving with me. You’ll be bouncing around to other islands and other countries on small planes.”
Billy McFarland after the failed festival in 2017. Pic: Reuters
Mr McFarland has also promised performances from a number of artists across the electronic, hip hop, pop and rock genres. But no artists are yet to be announced to be taking part.
“It’s not just music. We might have a professional skateboarder do a demonstration. We might have an MMA champion teach you techniques in the morning,” he said.
‘There is a risk component to it’
The disaster of the first Fyre festival became the focus of the Netflix series FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened in 2019.
It portrayed stranded guests who were faced to battle for a limited number of tents, had issues with access to water, and instead of gourmet meals, were served limp cheese sandwiches in Styrofoam boxes, a photo of which went viral on social media at the time.
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When asked if there was a risk to buying a ticket to the second attempt at the festival, Mr McFarland told Today: “Until it’s experienced, there is a risk component to it.”
“You’re taking a risk because I made a lot of bad decisions and messed up the first festival,” he said.
“Since 2016, Fyre has been the most talked about music festival in the world. Obviously, a lot of that has been negative, but I think that most people, once they kind of get under the hood and study the plans and see the team behind Fyre II, they see the upside.”
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He said if the festival is a success, he thinks it has the chance to be an annual event.
A minimum of $500,000 (£395,000) from the festival will also go toward the $26m (£20m) in losses that Mr McFarland still owes, NBC reported.
