Fyre Festival

Fyre Festival was a failed luxury music festival organized by American businessman Billy McFarland and American rapper Ja Rule. It was originally created to promote the company's Fyre app for booking music talent. The festival was scheduled to take place on April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma.

The event was promoted on Instagram by social media influencers, actors, reality TV stars and models including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Emily Ratajkowski, many of whom did not initially disclose they had been paid to do so. During the Fyre Festival's inaugural weekend, the event experienced problems related to security, food, accommodation, medical services, and artist relations, resulting in the festival being indefinitely postponed and eventually cancelled. Instead of the gourmet meals and luxury villas for which festival attendees had paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars, they received packaged sandwiches and were lodged in poorly furnished tents.

In March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud to defraud investors and ticket holders, and a second count to defraud a ticket vendor (while out on bail). In October 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to forfeit US$26 million. At least eight lawsuits were initiated against the organizers for defrauding ticket buyers, with several seeking class action status and one seeking more than $100 million in damages, and a judgment for US$2 million.

Two documentaries about the events of the festival were released in 2019: Hulu's Fyre Fraud, and Netflix's Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. It has also been featured on an episode of the Discovery Channel series Hustlers Gamblers Crooks.

In February 2025, it was reported that McFarland was selling tickets for "Fyre 2", to run from May 30 to June 2, 2025. On April 4, 2025, news organizations reported that two cities in Mexico had denied the festival is taking place and have no knowledge of the event; this includes the most recently announced location, Playa del Carmen. The announced dates were canceled on April 16, 2025, with organizers stating that the festival would be eventually rescheduled.

On June 2, 2025, Fyre Festival announced the launch of Fyre Coral View Pop-up and Fyre Hotels, happening at the Coral View Beach Resort on the Island Utila in the Bay Islands of Honduras on September 3 through 10. The consideration of Utila as a possible location and scouting it date back to social media posts from February 29, 2024.

Planning and organization

The festival was organized by Billy McFarland and Ja Rule to promote the Fyre music booking app. Ja Rule had come to know McFarland through regular visits to events McFarland hosted for his previous venture, Magnises. During a flight to the Bahamas, McFarland and Ja Rule's private plane touched down on a lightly populated island which they later discovered was Norman's Cay, the former private island of Carlos Lehder Rivas, a kingpin of the Medellín Cartel and a close associate of its leader, Pablo Escobar. McFarland then leased the island from the current owners, with the owners giving the strict condition that McFarland make no reference to Escobar in any marketing materials.

Promotional footage with hired supermodels was shot on Norman's Cay, and planning for the festival went ahead. On December 12, 2016, Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, and other influencers paid by Fyre simultaneously posted to their Instagram feeds a video with a thumbnail consisting of an orange square and a logo made of stylized flames. The video showed Bella Hadid and other models represented by her agency running around a tropical beach. Text with the video promised "an immersive music festival ... two transformative weekends ... on the boundaries of the impossible". This was the beginning of the Fyre Festival's promotional campaign, during which McFarland himself claimed that the island had been owned by Pablo Escobar, a falsehood. The owners cancelled their arrangement with McFarland soon after.

After being kicked off of Norman's Cay, the organizers had only four months to find a new venue before the Fyre Festival's April 28 start date. After several small islands turned them down, and with only two months to go before the festival, they were granted a permit by the Bahamian government to use a site set aside for development at Rokers Point (23.6350°N 75.9188°W / 23.6350; -75.9188) on Great Exuma. Material released on social media continued to promote the falsehood that the festival was being hosted on Pablo Escobar's private island, with maps of the site altered to make it appear as if Rokers Point was an island unto itself.

In reality, Great Exuma was neither a private nor remote island, and the Rokers Point site was a remote parking lot, part of an abandoned resort development just north of Sandals Emerald Bay Resort and a nearby marina where locals' boats were stored. McFarland never announced the change; he just simply began referring to the location as "Fyre Cay". With no infrastructure and no villas, the team had just under two months to turn Rokers Point into Fyre Cay.

An investor, fashion executive Carola Jain, reportedly arranged for Fyre to receive a $4 million loan, most of which was used to rent luxurious offices in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood. With no experience staging an event of the proposed festival's scale, McFarland began approaching companies that did, and was reportedly taken aback when informed the event would cost at least $50 million to stage in the time available, as he had promised. Furthermore, the more experienced consultants told them that in addition to the cost, an event of this magnitude would have needed an extra year to plan. McFarland and his associates at Fyre believed it would cost far less, and continued with their plans under that assumption. The organizers tried to do things themselves where possible; McFarland supposedly learned how to rent the stage by doing a Google Search.

In the days leading up to the festival, they cut expenses extensively, having learned that the luxury villas alone were going to cost $10 million, and targeted funds from deposits to pay for the bands, food, infrastructure, and staff.

Scheduled for two weekends in April and May 2017, the event sold day tickets at prices from $500 to $1,500, and VIP packages including airfare and luxury tent accommodation for $12,000. Customers were promised accommodation in "modern, eco-friendly, geodesic domes" and meals from celebrity chefs. The final advertised lineup was for 33 artists, including Pusha T, Tyga, Desiigner, Blink-182, Major Lazer, Disclosure, Migos, Rae Sremmurd, Kaytranada, Lil Yachty, Matoma, Klingande, Skepta, Claptone, Le Youth, Tensnake, Blond:ish, and Lee Burridge. In the days leading up to the festival, all of these acts pulled out. As a further complication, the first festival weekend coincided with the Exuma Regatta, a Bahamian sailing race series that used most of the island's hotels, vacation rentals and other resources.

While the festival's promotional material kept claiming that the festival would be held on a remote private island that once belonged to drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, workers were busy preparing Rokers Point for the festival, scattering sand over its rocks and improving a road to a nearby beach, where they built some cabanas and installed swing seats.

On the mainland, 5,000 tickets had been sold, and an air service was hired to fly festivalgoers from Miami. A medical services company and caterer were also hired, but the caterer withdrew a few weeks before the festival. With only two weeks to go, a new catering service was hired with a $1 million total budget, drastically reduced from the $6 million originally allocated to provide what was promised as "uniquely authentic island cuisine... local seafood, Bahamian-style sushi and even a pig roast".

In March 2017, Fyre hired veteran event producer Yaron Lavi, who saw that it was impossible to hold the sort of event McFarland and Ja Rule envisioned at the site. Given the lack of time until the event, he assumed they would postpone it to November as they had been discussing. However, when Fyre told him they would stage the event in the spring anyway, Lavi told them to abandon plans for temporary villas and instead erect tents, the only accommodation that could be delivered in the time remaining. Lavi advised Fyre to make this clear to those who had already bought tickets, as otherwise it would be damaging to their brand. He says the company assured him that an email was being prepared, but when interviewed afterward, he was not sure if it was ever sent.

Comcast Ventures considered investing $25 million in the Fyre app, which McFarland apparently hoped would allow him to finance the festival, but declined days beforehand. Reportedly, McFarland had valued Fyre Media at $90 million, but was unable to provide sufficient proof of that when Comcast requested it.

Writing for New York magazine, one of the event organizers later noted that since at least mid-March there had been significant problems with the planning, and at one point it was suggested they reschedule the 2017 festival until 2018. This idea was dropped at the last minute and it was decided to go on with the event as planned. "Let's just do it and be legends, man", one of the organizers is reported to have said.