Billy McFarland, the entrepreneur behind the infamous 2017 Fyre Festival disaster, has officially canceled plans for Fyre Festival 2 and announced he is selling the brand.
The announcement came Wednesday, just a week after organizers postponed the event with no new date set. “A new chapter begins. After two years of rebuilding FYRE with honesty, creativity, and relentless effort, it’s time to pass the torch,” McFarland wrote in a statement shared across the festival’s official channels.
The decision follows weeks of mounting complications for the event, which was originally scheduled for May 30 to June 2 on Isla Mujeres, an island off Mexico’s coast. The festival’s location had already been changed once, moving to Playa del Carmen after issues arose with the original site.
Local authorities created further complications when they publicly denied knowledge of the event. The Playa del Carmen government posted a statement saying “in response to rumors about a supposed event called ‘Fyre 2,’ we inform you that no event of that name will be held in Playa del Carmen.” This followed similar denials from officials in Isla Mujeres weeks earlier.
McFarland, who served four years in prison for fraud related to the original festival, claims he has identified alternative Caribbean destinations willing to host the event. “We dove into the process — meeting with national officials, conducting site visits — and we’re confident we’ve found the ideal location for the festival,” he stated.
Despite these alleged opportunities, McFarland determined his continued involvement would ultimately hinder the festival’s success. “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,” he wrote in the statement published on the festival’s official website.
The sale includes all festival assets, from trademarks and intellectual property to digital platforms and what McFarland describes as the brand’s “cultural capital.” He emphasized that the right buyer could transform Fyre into “a global force in entertainment, media, fashion” and beyond.
McFarland launched Fyre Festival 2 earlier this year, with tickets priced from $1,400 to as high as $25,000, while premium packages reportedly reached $1.1 million. When announcing the venture in February, he acknowledged public skepticism, stating, “I’m sure many people think I’m crazy for doing this again. But I feel I’d be crazy not to do it again.”
The original 2017 festival ended catastrophically when attendees arrived in the Bahamas to find unfinished accommodations, inadequate food, and most scheduled performers had withdrawn. The debacle spawned documentaries on Netflix and Hulu, led to multiple lawsuits, and resulted in McFarland’s conviction for defrauding investors of approximately $26 million — a sum he still owes in restitution.
Despite the latest setback, McFarland maintains that stepping away represents “the most responsible way” to achieve his stated goals of building a global entertainment brand while continuing to pay back those harmed by the original festival’s collapse.
