Days After Licensing the Fyre Name to a Media Company, Billy McFarland Puts ‘Fyre Festival’ Up for Sale

Photo Credit: Web Summit / CC by 2.0

Billy McFarland is looking for a buyer for the Fyre Festival name after cancelling his second attempt at hosting a destination festival. He recently licensed the ‘Fyre’ name (in perpetuity) to a media company that will run free, ad-supported music television channels later this year.

McFarland officially announced the cancellation of Fyre Festival 2 after indefinitely postponing the festival. It was supposed to be hosted in Playa del Carmen from May 30 to June 2—but permits shared by McFarland and Co. highlighted that the live music festival was little more than a hotel permitted to play recorded music for a gathering of around 250 people. Anyone who purchased a ticket to Fyre Festival 2 will be refunded.

Fyre Festival was the subject of two documentaries after the much-lauded beach bash turned out to be little more than refugee tents and cheese sandwiches in styrofoam boxes. Announced acts like Blink-182 and Migos dropped out, while guests arrived to find naked mattresses stacked in igloo-looking tents spread out on the sparse beach. The whole event landed McFarland in prison for four years on federal fraud charges.

Now in an official statement on the Fyre Festival website, McFarland says he’s seeking a buyer of the Fyre Festival name—calling it the “most powerful attention engine” in the world.

“Over the past two years, we’ve poured everything into bringing Fyre back with honesty, transparency, relentless effort, and creativity. We’ve taken the long road to rebuilding trust. We rebuilt momentum. And we proved one thing without a doubt: Fyre is one of the most powerful attention engines in the world.”

“Since 2017, Fyre has dominated headlines, documentaries, and conversations as one of the world’s most talked-about music festivals. We knew that Fyre was big, but we didn’t realize just how massive it would become. That wave has brought us here, to a point where we know it’s time to call for assistance.”

“This brand is bigger than any one person and bigger than what I’m able to lead on my own. It’s a movement. And it deserves a team with the scale, experience, and infrastructure to realize its potential. We have decided the best way to accomplish our goals is to sell the Fyre Festival brand, including its trademarks, IP, digital assets, media reach, and cultural capital—to an operator that can fully realize its vision.”

Billy McFarland still owes $26 million in restitution to victims of the first Fyre Festival debacle. While he’s right that Fyre Festival attracts eyeballs and is very talked about, none of the attention is positive attention. The brand ‘Fyre Festival’ has now become synonymous with failure, with some live music fans branding this year’s Coachella ‘worse than Fyre Festival’ after lengthy delays and technical issues. (But hey, at least Coachella did have all the live music you could enjoy with actual luxury accommodations to boot.)

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