Fyre Festival was a music festival scheduled to take place on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma over two weekends in April and May 2017. An event organized by Fyre Media founder, Billy McFarland and rapper, Ja Rule as a luxury music festival to promote the Fyre music booking app. The event was promoted on Instagram by social media influencers including socialite and model Kendall Jenner, model Bella Hadid, model and actress Emily Ratajkowski, and other media personalities, many of whom did not initially disclose they had been paid to do so. According to a report by Vice, McFarland spent millions on models, private jets, and yachts to promote what would be his first-ever large-scale event.
The Fyre Squad of this Event
Organizers of the festival started off by recruiting a group of influencers they call “Fyre Starters,” among those influencers were Kendall Jenner (whom McFarland paid $250,000 for a single Instagram post), Ashanti, Bella Hadid and Hailey Baldwin. They all posted to their Instagram feeds an image of an orange square with a stylized logo of flames, and when viewers clicked on it, they opened a promotional video showing 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 only the beginning of the Fyre Festival’s promotional campaign.
Lucky (or not so lucky) for them their pitch resulted in millions of media impressions and pending partnerships with Samsung and Casamigos Tequila. The “Fyre Squad” of organizers included Ja Rule (hip-hop artist), McFarland (guided the company’s overall direction and strategy), chief marketing officer Grant Margolin and Elliot Tebele, who cultivated a social presence repurposing other people’s jokes on his Instagram account @FuckJerry.
Catastrophic Loss for Investors
Low on funds, McFarland and his team try to get a second round of investments. An investor, fashion executive Carola Jain, reportedly arranged for Fyre to receive a $4 million loan, which the company used most of to rent luxurious offices in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood. McFarland had no experience in staging an event as big as he had proposed, so he began reaching out to companies that did, and he was reportedly shocked when they told him the event would cost at least $5 million, and perhaps even $12 million for it to be staged in the time available he had promised. However, he and his associates believed it would cost far less and decided to continue as planned under that assumption.
Comcast Ventures considered investing $25 million in the app, which McFarland apparently hoped would allow him to finance the festival but declined days beforehand. It was reported that McFarland had valued Fyre Media at $90 million and was unable to provide sufficient proof of that when Comcast requested it. After this deal fell through, McFarland had obtained some temporary financing for Fyre through investor Ezra Birnbaum that required the company repay at least half a million dollars of the loan within 16 days. According to one lawsuit, Fyre informed ticketholders around this same time that the event would be cashless, and that in order to cover incidentals they encouraged attendees to put up to $1,500 in advance on a digital Fyre Band. McFarland who signed the emailed, suggested they upload $300-500 for every day they planned to attend. According to a lawsuit filed by Birnbaum, 40% of this money was to be used to pay off the short-term loan.
Promises of a Luxurious Event
The Fyre Festival was scheduled for two weekends in April and May 2017, the event sold day tickets from $500 to $1,500, and VIP packages including airfare and luxury tent accommodations for $12,000. Attendees were promised accommodations in “modern, eco-friendly, geodesic domes” and meals from celebrity chefs. The festival’s site, Fyre Cay, claimed to be a remote private island that once belonged to drug trafficker, Pablo Escobar – did not exist. Instead, workers in the Bahamas were busy preparing Roker 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 sets. With so little time leading up to the event, Fyre was advised to abandon plans for temporary villas and instead erect tents, the only accommodations that could be delivered in the time remaining.
The Beginning of a Disastrous Festival
Fyre Festival’s inaugural weekend started with all sorts of problems. The event experienced problems related to security, food, accommodations and artist relations. Attendees began arriving on chartered flights from Miami International Airport to Exuma International Airport. Initial arrivals were brought to an “impromptu beach party” rather than the festival grounds, while later arrivals were brought directly to the grounds. The only act to perform at the event were a group of local musicians, who took the stage and played for a few hours. Attendees arrived to what was supposed to be this ideal music festival get away to finding tents and prepackaged sandwiches, instead of luxury villas and gourmet meals they were initially promised when they paid thousands of dollars for admission.
Once the early morning came around, it was announced that the festival would be postponed and that the attendees would be returned to Miami as soon as possible. According to reports, many problems emerged, including the mishandling or theft of guests’ baggage, scattered disaster relief tents with dirt floors, some with mattresses that were soaking wet, guests were left with no place to sleep as there were no housing assignments, an unfinished gravel lot, a lack of medical personnel or event staff, no cell phone or internet service, portable toilets, no running water, inadequate and poor quality food, and heavy-handed security. Many attendees were stranded, as flights to and from the island were cancelled after a government order that barred any more planes from landing.
The Aftermath of the Fyre Festival
The blogger (Seth Crosano) who helped with the disastrous Bahamian Fyre Festival and his friend (Mark Thompson) have recently won a $5 million lawsuit against the event’s founder Bill McFarland. Fyre Media was already facing the first of more than a dozen lawsuits seeking millions and alleging fraud, breach of contract and more. McFarland is currently in jail and due to be sentenced on two counts of wire fraud. Prosecutors brought new charges against him, alleging he continued to scam people since Fyre Festival while out on bail. There are many potential victims affected by this disastrous event: ticket buyers, investors and businesses small and large, spread across the United States and the Bahamas.
References
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/world/americas/maryann-rolle-fyre-festival-gofundme.html