This is the third and final post I will be making about Fyre Festival 2, the festival that no-one expected to succeed, and it didn’t.
Fyre Festival 2 has had a rough few months.
It announced nothing, tried charging one million dollars for tickets and focused on selling merch rather than actually organising a festival.
And in between all this, there’s been sporadic updates from Mr. Fyre Festival himself, Billy McFarland, stating over and over that Fyre Festival 2 was definitely happening and every doubter was wrong!
And now, there has been once final update: Fyre festival 2 is cancelled, Billy McFarland is stepping back and they are looking to sell the brand to the highest bidder.
So where are we now?
The Final Update
Let’s take a closer look at the final update from the festival. Well, from Billy (of course).
It is a lengthy piece that is mostly waffle and nonsense.
“The festival is so huge and succesful that I need to not be part of it and we’re trying to offload it to the first person who offers us any money.”
The post was also added to their Instagram page, and now comments on all their posts have been turned off.
Because nothing says ‘This was a decision made in good faith’ like turning off comments.
What happens now?
I THINK the festival is definitely cancelled.
You can’t buy tickets any more anyway.
However I haven’t actually seen anything definitely saying that the festival is cancelled. Maybe they just assumed that way obvious and didn’t need saying?
However, the Independent have stated that refunds have been issued already and idiots people who did buy tickets have been issued refunds.
The Website
The fire website, fyre.mx (Something I have complained about in much of the previous 2 posts for being badly made and offering basically no information) is still up, but it’s completely changed.
All the previous sections (even the FAQ and contact!) have been removed.
There are now only three sections to the website:
What we’ve already gone over.
Here’s the whole thing if you fancy reading a whole lot of nothing.
I have never seen a music festival try to sell it’s entire brand before, so I am not sure how it’s done, but I don’t think this is the way…
So, they are selling off the brand name, IP and trademarks (pretty sure all those could have been grouped together.
They’re also selling media coverage. What does that mean?
They’re also selling their team? What??
Below this is a form, which is apparently the official way that they are taking bids to buy the entire festival. A public form on a website.
I’m sure thats how all these big deals go down.
Are they really expecting like huge event conglomerates to fill that in?
Yes, they’re STILL selling merchandise! You can spend $130 on merch for a festival that isn’t happening!
I get that they have all this stock they’re trying to shift, but they haven’t even put a discount on anything.
They’re even still selling the ‘Fyre Festival is real’ t-shirt, ironically.
Will Fyre Festival 2 ever happen?
This will be a short section that im including mostly because I feel like I need to.
Probably not. They are trying to auction off the IP of the festival at the moment, but realistically all they will get for it is the brand name,
A name that people now associate with two of the worst-planned music festivals of all time,.
Who would want to buy that???
Wrap up
Fyre Festival 1 was an absolute dumpster fire of mismanagement that somehow got to the event date without being cancelled.
Thankfully Fyre festival 2 didn’t get that far.
To summarise, using my own words and opinions: Fyre festival 2 failed because everyone could see it for what it was: a shameless cash grab to get money to pay Billy MacFarlands debts.
however, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if this was Billy’s plan all along. Get lots of people talking about Fyre festival 2 (No such thing as bad publicity and all that) to try and get a higher price when selling the whole thing?
If so, that’s incredibly scummy and yet frankly, very on brand for Billy McFarland (Entirely my own opinion)
And even if that was his plan, why go this far into it? Why make so many mistakes, and hurt the brand even more before trying to sell it? I think the answer may just be…
The festival is dead, but hey at least we all got a few extra months of making fun of Billy Mcfarland again.