Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland is selling the brand rights on eBay 

Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland is selling the brand rights to the infamous 2017 festival on eBay.

Sharing a video to Instagram yesterday (9th July), the Fyre CEO and founder said he was “taking the most famous festival brand and putting it up for auction”, calling it as “the craziest thing I’ve ever done”.

“Whoever owns the Fyre brand will have an attention engine to launch festivals, do merch, collabs, do pop-ups, run live streams, or build a media brand”, he continued.

As of the time of writing (10th July), the eBay listing — which ends on 14th July at 17:44 BST — has had 114 bids, which leaves the current auction price at $205,500.00 (£151,515.15).

In the same video, McFarland explained that there will be a separate “carve out” for the Fyre music deal, an independent company being run by “an incredible entrepreneur”.

Back in April, Deadline reported that documentary filmmaker Shawn Rech, who previously co-founded the TruBlue streaming service, had partially acquired the intellectual property rights of the disastrous festival brand, including two trademarks that would allow him to use the name for his new streaming platform.

Rech confirmed in a statement to Rolling Stone that the deal was “complete”, writing: “We had (and still apparently have) the option to buy the rights to host a Fyre Festival, but that’s not a priority right now. Billy tried to carve out a deal on the festival only, and I guess that fell through.”

McFarland revealed in an Instagram video on Monday (7th July) that he was close to sealing “a seven-figure deal for the complete Fyre brand IP package”, but the deal ultimately fell through. “But now the opportunity to own the Fyre brand is back on the table”, he added.

Earlier this year, McFarland began trumpeting the arrival of a Fyre Festival 2, which was seemingly scheduled to take place on Friday 30th May through to Monday 2nd June. However, the festival was later revealed to be “postponed” indefinitely, according to a statement from the event’s organisers. This was after the local tourism board in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, where the festival was supposedly due to take place, said that it did “not exist”.

The first edition of Fyre Festival in 2017 was mired in disaster and controversy, with guests greeted with inadequate accommodation and a an alarming lack of organisation. The crowd was left stranded without shelter or transportation home, and local suppliers and vendors went unpaid, with serious financial implications. Two documentary films, Fyre Fraud and Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened were made about the fiasco, both of which positioned the event as an inevitable disaster.

McFarland was convicted of fraud and sentenced to six years in prison for his part in the festival. He was released after less than four years, but had to repay $3 million to a former investor. A New York court also awarded $7,220 each to 277 attendees.