By Megan Macdonald for ABC
The original Fyre Festival ended in chaos, disappointment, lawsuits and multiple documentaries. Photo: Netflix / supplied
Billy McFarland is back selling tickets for Fyre Festival, and no, this isn't 2017.
This week the self-described entrepreneur announced on his social media accounts that the first 100 Fyre Festival II pre-sale tickets had gone on sale for US$499 (NZ$834).
And yep, the first round has already sold out.
But who is Billy McFarland? And why is this festival news being met with so much cynicism?
To answer that, we need to head back to 2017.
What was Fyre Festival ... and how was Ja Rule involved?
When a trailer dropped in January 2017 announcing "a music festival like no other", viewers were met with turquoise blue oceans, famous models Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber frolicking on a beach, and private jets.
The high-production video and social media campaign was launched by influencers and celebrities around the world with a single orange tile on their Instagram accounts.
It was reported by Vanity Fair at the time that McFarland and Rule engaged the services of 400 influencers and celebrities to promote it.
The campaign promised "an experience like no other" which included a private island location that was claimed to "once be owned by Pablo Escobar", mingling with celebrities, and luxury accommodation.
Billy McFarland and Ja Rule. Photo: Netflix / supplied
Set to be held over two weekends, tickets to the festival cost up to US$12,780 (NZ$21,378) for a four-day package.
It was the brainchild of Billy McFarland, a young businessman who had previously co-founded a card-based private club targeted at millennials called Magnises, and famous early-2000s American rapper Ja Rule.
The idea for Fyre Festival was born in an effort to promote their Fyre Media business, an app that would allow people to book musical acts for private events.
But soon, the Fyre name would become synonymous with disaster, countless memes, multiple lawsuits, and even prison time.
So how did it all go wrong?
Anticipation of the festival was all over social media.
Blink-182 and Migos were set to perform, and ticket-holders were excitedly documenting their journeys to the Bahamas.
But when they got there, they were met with chaos.
The musical acts had pulled out (it was revealed that this was due to lack of payment), disaster relief tents were set up and there was very little food and water (the caterers had cancelled their contract with the festival earlier that month).
A post on Twitter (now X) of a single sandwich in a styrofoam container went viral, as angry ticket holders demanded refunds.
Here's the dinner they fed us tonight. Literally slices of bread, cheese, and salad with no dressing. #fyrefraud #fyrefestival #dumpsterfyre pic.twitter.com/NmNXakSFlq
— Tr3vor (@TrevorDeHaas) April 28, 2017
The festival had gone from the promise of a luxury music experience, to something that more closely resembled the survival film Lord of the Flies.
"So Fyre Fest is a complete disaster. Mass chaos. No organisation. No one knows where to go. There are no villas, just a disaster tent city," attendee William N Finley said on Twitter (now X) when he arrived.
Quickly, ticket holders did everything they could to turn around and head home.
Many were stranded for hours, sometimes days, and some were forced to sleep on wet mattresses in tents.
Wasn't there a documentary about this?
Yes, that's right. Several in fact.
The viral response to the Fyre Festival disaster created international media coverage, which was followed by two documentaries being released.
Netflix released Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened in 2019 and US-based streaming service Hulu released Fyre Fraud the same year.
Both featured interviews with co-organisers, investors, staff and the Bahamas locals that were all impacted.
Fyre Fraud even featured the man himself, Billy McFarland.
Ja Rule's involvement didn't receive the same type of attention as McFarland's, and at one point he distanced himself from the event completely.
"I too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked, lead astray!" he wrote on Twitter (now X) shortly after the scandal.
Surely someone went to jail?
They sure did, the fallout was immediate - many ex-staff members from Fyre Media spoke out against the organisers, mainly McFarland, and revealed what was really going on behind the glossy social media campaigns.
There were multiple lawsuits and eventually McFarland pleaded guilty to defrauding investors in 2018, serving four years in prison for wire fraud and was fined US$39m (NZ$65m).
A year after McFarland was jailed, Ja Rule was cleared of any wrongdoing for his involvement.
All in all, the festival caused more than US$26m (NZ43.5m) in losses and many locals in the Bahamas were never paid.
Exuma Point Bar & Grill restaurant owner, MaryAnn Rolle, struck a particular chord with audiences when she featured in the Netflix documentary, claiming to have lost US$50,000 (NZ$83640) in her own savings so she could feed festival staff and attendees.
Viewers rallied around her cause, donating to a campaign that went on to raise over US$233,700 (NZ$390,933).
So why on earth would people buy tickets to Fyre Festival II?
That's a good question, and one many would be asking in light of the news that Fyre Festival is coming back.
McFarland is out of jail and driving the return of the event - with it even set to go back to the Caribbean in December next year.
He announced the return on social media in April, and this week the first round of tickets sold out.
Fyre Festival was a viral cultural moment, which is enough to draw people in, says Dr Brent Coker from the University of Melbourne, who specialises in viral marketing.
"In terms of well-known brand names, Fyre Festival would be up there," Coker said.
"Yes, it was a disaster, but there was some adventure associated with it. It was exciting at the time, even though so many people were angry about it."
McFarland sounds confident that take two will be different, despite the monumental fallout the first time round.
"There's FOMO (fear of missing out) involved here," Coker said.
"You saw it with the Barbie movie as well. The viral marketing surrounding that film created a FOMO effect for consumers who didn't want to feel left out."
McFarland tweeted on 3 April: "I was one of the most Googled people in the world. What's next will be the biggest comeback of all time."
We'll have to wait and see.
- This article was originally published by ABC.
