The most trustworthy man in live music and grilled cheese, Billy McFarland, plans to host Fyre Festival II next spring on a private island off the coast of Mexico.
McFarland — who pleaded guilty to fraud charges related to the disastrous first Fyre Festival in 2017 — revealed details about the eagerly-anticipated sequel in a new interview with NBC News.
“We have the chance to embrace this storm and really steer our ship into all the chaos that has happened, and if it’s done well, I think Fyre has a chance to be this annual festival that really takes over the festival industry,” McFarland said.
The festival will take place April 25 through 28, 2025, with McFarland aiming to get 3,000 attendees. The cheapest tickets will be around $1,400, while the most expensive packages will cost $1.1 million and purportedly come with things like luxury yachts, scuba diving, and travel between islands.
McFarland actually offered up a batch of 100 presale tickets for $499 last year and sold out, despite the total lack of details about Fyre Fest II at the time. Just over a year later, those details are still pretty slim. While there is a date, there’s still no lineup and McFarland admitted that no artists have been booked yet. (Perhaps he can ask some of the rappers he’s been referring to the Trump campaign, as Rolling Stone reported he was up to earlier this summer.)
And on the Fyre Fest II website, the location is vaguely listed as “a private island off of the Caribbean coast in Mexico,” with no further info. McFarland did insist this island already had some infrastructure in place, like hotels and villas.
As for all the other things it takes to put on a festival, McFarland said he’s hired a company — which he declined to name — to “handle the stages and the bathrooms and all the stuff that I clearly don’t know how to do.”
McFarland didn’t say much about food, but did joke (?) that there would be cheese sandwiches like last time. “They’re going to be super expensive, too,” he said. “We’re going to make them, like, really good. Like, that’ll be the highest priced food item, I think.”
McFarland pleaded guilty to defrauding Fyre Fest investors and was freed in 2022 after a little less than four years in prison. He previously said that, while he was in prison, he started to plot out Fyre Fest II with a “50-page plan” explaining how he would “take this overall interest in Fyre” and his “ability to bring people from around the world together to make the impossible happen.”
To that end, McFarland seemed confident that Fyre Fest II would remain an intriguing prospect exactly because of its well-documented history. “I think there’s a large number of people who want to go to Fyre II because they’re unsure of the outcome, and they would like to have a front-row seat no matter what happens,” McFarland said. “Thankfully, we have good partners who will make sure they’re safe and obviously make sure things work out.”
From Rolling Stone US
