What happened at the Fyre Festival? Details explored as Billy McFarland unveils come back plans following 2017 scandal

Fyre Festival was held at the island of Great Exuma in the Bahamas, the Caribbean, in 2017. The festival was organized by Billy McFarland and Ja Rule, with Blink-182 and Migos billed as headlining acts. The festival was promoted by celebrities such as Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Emily Ratajkowski. The festival was organized to support the Fyre app.

While the festival promised festivalgoers a luxury event, complete with deluxe food, opulent accommodations, and outstanding experiences, the reality of the experience was completely different. Before the festival started, both the headlining acts and other acts dropped out of the festival before the festival even started.

Upon arrival, festivalgoers found a campsite devoid of electricity and water, with festivalgoers' luggage dumped into containers. There were only emergency disaster relief tents for accommodation, and the food was only prepackaged cheese sandwiches, limited in numbers and supply. There were wild animals roaming around in the campsite.

Other guests were stuck in the Bahamas airport. Billy McFarland initially apologized for the festival disaster 48 hours after the disaster at the festival premises was revealed, stating in an interview with Vice on April 28, 2017:

"Unfortunately we were hit by a storm early Thursday morning that caused some damage to half our tent housing and busted pipes and delayed flights that were arriving to the point where we weren’t comfortable in our ability to resolve it, and we decided to postpone the festival."

He also explained that the festival was originally started as a way to test if people would be interested in

"We started the website to test the theory that people were interested, and it went from there. All of a sudden we had thousands of guests and we started booking talent, and we had a festival on our hands. So we thought, ‘Oh wow, we have to go solve all the logistical problems."

Fyre Festival lawsuits explored as Fyre Festival II is announced by Billy McFarland

The Fyre Festival fiasco resulted in a major class action lawsuit worth $100 million, filed by entertainment lawyer Mark Geragos on behalf of Daniel Jung, with the class action status request made in anticipation of more than 150 plaintiffs. The lawsuit was filed in the state of California.

A second lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles by John Girardi on behalf of three unnamed festivalgoers against Fyre Media, McFarland, and Ja Rule, as well as Does 1–100.

Several other lawsuits were filed elsewhere in the country, including one in New York, another by National Event Services, as well as lawsuits in New Jersey, Florida, and Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston.

Alongside the lawsuits, there was a federal investigation by the FBI, which charged Billy McFarland with wire fraud, resulting in a sentence of 6 years of imprisonment and a fine of $26 million, alongside the damages to be paid to plaintiffs in the aforementioned lawsuit. 277 ticket holders were awarded more than $7000 in damages, while lawsuit plaintiffs won as much as $5 million.

It is in this backdrop, after six years, that Billy McFarland is once again attempting an edition of Fyre Festival, this time on the Mexican island of Isla Mujeres, Mexico, from May 30, 2025, to June 2, 2025. The festival is currently selling tickets ranging from $1,400 to $1,100,000. Both in the festival poster and the exclusive interview with Today, Billy McFarland emphasized that Fyre Festival 2 is being organized by others:

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Fyre Festival 2 has not announced its lineup or any other further details. The festival is being produced by LostNights, with the ticketing details being handled by Friendly Sky and SoldOut.

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