‘A lot of red flags’: Fyre Festival investor fears reboot disaster
Andy King (left) and Billy McFarland (right) in 2014
An investor in the disastrous Fyre Festival has issued a warning to anyone interested in going to its planned reboot: “Proceed with caution.”
Andy King’s comment comes after Billy McFarland announced Fyre II, after only recently being released from prison for scamming millions from the original.
Mr King, who lost $1m in the original debacle, told the BBC that McFarland was “known for the biggest failure in pop culture and wants to flip the script. But I’m not sure he’s going about it the right way.”
McFarland, 32, spent four years in prison over the 2017 event in the Bahamas, which provided none of the promised “luxury” for tickets costing up to $250,000. Tickets for Fyre II next April will cost up to $1.1m (£840,000), he says.
McFarland told US media last week that “Fyre II has to work”. He claimed he had spent a year planning it, and had already sold 100 tickets at an ‘early bird’ rate of $499.
Mr King, 63, said he had met McFarland several months ago to discuss Fyre II but he feared his former business partner hadn’t “learned a lot in prison… he’s shooting from the hip again”.
“Billy has a gift. He’s got a lot of charisma. He knows how to pull people in,” the South Carolina-based event planner told BBC News.
“Think about it: when he was 24, he walked in to investment banking firms in New York and got them to invest $29m.”
He said Fyre II could be a “huge success” – but if McFarland was “running the show again, it won’t work”.
Image source, Andy King
Andy King
Mr King, who said none of his $1m investment in the original festival had been returned, was contacted by McFarland to meet investors in the new venture.
“I’m just seeing a lot of red flags, and a lot of red lights”, he said. “And I feel bad. It saddens me.
“We were going to rent one of the biggest estates in the Hamptons and have a big, swanky party,” said Mr King, referencing a famed playground of America’s rich and famous.
“We ended up having 30 people at a pizza place along the Montauk highway.”
He said subsequent calls were cancelled and he hadn’t heard from McFarland in seven or eight months.
Image source, Getty Images
Rapper Ja Rule (centre) co-founded Fyre Fest in 2017 alongside McFarland
The original Fyre was promoted by supermodels and celebrities as an exclusive getaway for the very rich, and the location was hyped as a private island once owned by drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Festival-goers arrived to find all the talent cancelled, bare mattresses to sleep on in storm-ravaged tents and cheese sandwiches in takeaway containers to eat.
McFarland was sentenced in 2018 to six years in jail for wire fraud, and was also ordered to return $29m to investors.
He was freed in 2022 under an early release programme but remains on probation until next August.
According to McFarland, tickets for next year will start at $1,400 but will go as high as $1.1m.
The most expensive package will include scuba diving, island hopping and luxury yachts.
He said the event was “not going to be just music” and could include sideshows like a live karate combat pit.
He admitted, however, that he has yet to book any talent.
‘They’re all watching’
Mr King said he would still want to talk to his old business partner about his new venture, despite still facing a backlash for his involvement in the original festival – everywhere he goes, he says, people still give him “the scam guy” treatment.
He emerged a sympathetic figure in the 2019 Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened for his efforts to turn the disaster around.
In arguably the most viral moment from the entire saga, external, he describes how McFarland urged him to offer sexual favours to Bahamian customs officials to secure enough bottled water for the event.
That “funny fame”, however, has come at a steep price for Mr King.
He added that he had stayed in touch with McFarland through his prison term and briefly advised him on reputation management last year.
At the very least, he said, “the Fyre brand is so well known around the world that there is going to be a lot of people that will be curious”.
“And they’re all watching.”
