Billy McFarland, the infamous entrepreneur behind the disastrous Fyre Festival, has now reached what might be the most fitting chapter in the saga of his failed luxury music festival – he’s selling the brand on eBay.
According to Rolling Stone, after failing to successfully launch Fyre Festival II earlier this year, McFarland appeared to acknowledge that perhaps he was the problem. In April, he announced plans to step back from the brand, put it up for sale and “allow a new team to move forward independently.”
Initially, a buyer quickly emerged. Shawn Rech, a documentary filmmaker and co-founder of the TruBlu streaming service alongside To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen, struck a deal for some of the Fyre Fest trademarks. Rech’s plans include launching a music streaming service, broadcast channel, and app under the Fyre name.
However, this deal left a significant portion of the brand still available – specifically the part related to live events, which is what made Fyre Festival notorious in the first place.
In an Instagram video posted on July 7th, McFarland claimed he was on the verge of closing a “seven-figure deal for the complete Fyre brand IP package” before the arrangement collapsed. He did not identify the prospective buyer.
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Rech confirmed to Rolling Stone that his deal with McFarland is “complete,” adding, “We had (and still apparently have) the option to buy the rights to host a Fyre Festival, but that’s not a priority right now. Billy tried to carve out a deal on the festival only, and I guess that fell through.”
Undeterred, McFarland revealed his “craziest” plan yet in another Instagram video: “Today I am taking the most famous festival brand, Fyre Festival, and putting it up for auction on eBay starting at one cent.”
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In the video, McFarland boasted about receiving “over 1,000 offers for the Fyre brand” and declared, “I am done playing games.” He highlighted the “32 billion impressions” Fyre Fest has generated online since 2017 and claimed that the brand’s new owner would “have an attention engine to launch festivals, do merch collabs, do pop-ups, run livestreams, or build a media brand.”
According to the eBay listing, which is indeed legitimate, the sale includes carve-outs for the portions of the Fyre brand already purchased by Rech, such as the Fyre Music streaming platform and “a free ad-supported and broadcast TV platform.” There’s also a carve-out for a Fyre Fest “theatre project,” presumably referring to a Broadway musical that McFarland previously claimed was in development.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 71 bidders had driven the price from its original one cent to $50,200. The auction is scheduled to end on Tuesday, 14th July at 12:44 pm ET, giving potential buyers one week to place their bids – if they dare.
