Fyre Festival, the doomed-from-the-start music festival that never was, is one of the most notorious failures of the internet era. And now it can be yours! Well, it could have been if you got in on the eBay auction that sold off the rights to the Fyre Festival brand in Billy McFarland’s latest bid to pay back the $26 million in restitution that he still owes to the people he defrauded.
Unfortunately for McFarland, his plan to monetize the Fyre Festival name is barely going to put a dent in what he owes. The auction, which ended Tuesday morning, received 175 bids and ultimately sold for $245,300—about 1/10th of McFarland’s outstanding bill. The sale included the Fyre Festival name, its registered trademarks and intellectual property, social media accounts, and domain names. What is the value of all that? Well, McFarland says that Fyre Festival has amassed 32 billion online impressions since 2016, which is certainly a lot of traffic. Of course, most of that was people gawking at the music festival equivalent of a 100-car pileup, but they did, in fact, look.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the auction bundle is the “behind-the-scenes content and documentary footage,” which might be useful for anyone hoping to shed a little more light on just how big of a shitshow this thing was. Sure, there have already been two documentaries about the original disaster, but there’s always room for more. McFarland also sold Fyre Festival’s email and SMS lists, which actually probably do have value to marketers.
Also, not to accuse anyone of impropriety or anything, but the winning bid on the Fyre Festival auction was placed by an account that had never bid on anything before. It placed 23 bids on the Fyre Festival auction, all on the final day of bidding. On several occasions, it raised the price without anyone else placing a bid. Maybe that is normal behavior on eBay, but it seems at least a little odd.
Selling the brand entirely is a bit of a pivot for McFarland, who earlier this year was still pumping Fyre Festival 2, a second crack at the music festival concept that was set to be held in the Caribbean. McFarland first floated the comeback attempt in 2023 and immediately started selling pre-sale tickets for the event. This is going to come as a total shock; it was a totally half-cocked plan that fell apart. Earlier this year, McFarland announced the event would take place in Isla Mujeres—only for the minister for tourism to say they have no knowledge of the event and didn’t give permission to host it there.
So McFarland pivoted to selling the brand entirely. Frankly, that’s probably the best thing for him. Then he can stop being tempted to revive the damn thing. Surely he’ll be back with another scheme, as attention-starved convicted criminals with little but their dubious notoriety to lean on tend to do. But Fyre now belongs to someone else.