Billy McFarland Says Fyre Festival Is for Sale

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/billy-mcfarland-fyre-festival-for-sale.html

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Vincent van Gogh once advised aspiring artists to treat their creative pursuits like a flame: “One must never let the fire go out in one’s soul,” he said, “but keep it burning.”

Billy McFarland, a felon whose so-called creative pursuits have cost victims millions of dollars, has burned down plenty along the way. His internationally mocked and infinitely memed Fyre Festival in 2017, now cultural shorthand for hubris of the elite, was a scam that sent Mr. McFarland to prison for nearly four years.

While awaiting sentencing in the Fyre Festival case, Mr. McFarland started a V.I.P. ticket service that promised users tickets he didn’t have to events like the Broadway musical “Hamilton” and the Met Gala.

In recent months, Mr. McFarland had pivoted to Fyre Festival 2, a moderately-hyped attempt at redemption. That effort — perhaps blessedly, for all who optimistically bought the exorbitantly priced tickets (ranging from $1,400 to $1.1 million) — appeared to be over before it even started. Playa del Carmen, the city in Mexico that Mr. McFarland claimed would host the event, publicly snubbed him, saying there was no record of the festival and it would not be hosted on its shores.

Now, a month before Fyre Festival 2 was supposedly set to kick off, Mr. McFarland is putting out his Fyre for good: He announced he would sell the brand and all its trappings to the highest bidder.

“This brand is bigger than any one person,” Mr. McFarland said in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday. “It’s clear that I need to step back and allow a new team to move forward independently.”