This sale was not on Fyre.
Billy McFarland offered the rights to his notorious Fyre Competition model on Tuesday, however he wasn’t blissful concerning the quantity it went for.
After the week-long sale involving 175 bids from 42 bidders, the undisclosed purchaser paid $245,300 for the Fyre Competition IP, model emblems and social media belongings.
“Damn. This sucks, it’s so low,” McFarland, 33, mentioned concerning the last bid whereas livestreaming the public sale, based on NBC Information.
In a press release on his Instagram, McFarland wrote: “I would like to congratulate the winning bidder in the FYRE Festival IP auction on eBay. I look forward to working with them to begin the process to finalize the sale.”
“FYE Festival is just one chapter of my story,” the convicted fraudster acknowledged, “and I’m just excited to move onto my next one.”
McFarland claimed that the public sale “became the most-watched non-charity listing on eBay during its run, proving once again that attention is currency, and views are the root of attention.”
“That belief is at the core of what I’m building next: a tech platform designed to capture and power the value behind every view online,” McFarland added, teasing that his subsequent venture is “coming soon.”
The unique Fyre Competition, co-organized by McFarland and Ja Rule, ended disastrously again in 2017.
Attendees who paid hundreds of {dollars} for tickets arrived within the Bahamas anticipating a luxe movie star expertise solely to be stranded with no musical acts, no electrical energy, no operating water and a restricted provide of cheese sandwiches and FEMA huts to nourish and shelter them.
In 2018, McFarland pleaded responsible to 2 counts of wire fraud after the federal authorities decided he had defrauded buyers out of greater than $26 million. He was ordered to pay the complete quantity in restitution and sentenced to 6 years in jail, however was launched in 2022 after serving simply 4 years.
The Fyre Competition controversy has been explored in a number of documentaries, together with Netflix’s “FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” and Hulu’s “Fyre Fraud.”
McFarland introduced final yr that Fyre Competition 2 was within the works. He claimed it could happen on “a private island off the coast of Mexico in the Caribbean” and promised that “an incredible production company” was dealing with the occasion.
The competition was later slated for Might 2025 in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, till a dispute with the placement occurred.
After Fyre Competition 2 was postponed indefinitely, McFarland revealed he was promoting the model.
“We have decided the best way to accomplish our goals is to sell the FYRE Festival brand, including its trademarks, IP, digital assets, media reach, and cultural capital – to an operator that can fully realize its vision,” McFarland mentioned in April.
The entrepreneur acknowledged that Fyre Competition “deserves a team with the scale, experience, and infrastructure to realize its potential.”
