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Millennial Festival Fiasco

The Fyre Festival was promoted as an exclusive luxury music festival in the Bahamas in 2017, but when attendees arrived they found hurricane tents and inadequate food instead of the promised beachfront villas and gourmet dining. Two documentaries explored what went wrong, revealing that most musical guests cancelled and attendees faced long waits and poor conditions before the event was abandoned. The festival's organizer, Billy McFarland, was later sentenced to six years in prison for fraud. Local Bahamian workers who helped prepare also lost money from the failed event. The disaster demonstrated the importance of vetting music festivals and organizers thoroughly before purchasing tickets.

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211 views2 pages

Millennial Festival Fiasco

The Fyre Festival was promoted as an exclusive luxury music festival in the Bahamas in 2017, but when attendees arrived they found hurricane tents and inadequate food instead of the promised beachfront villas and gourmet dining. Two documentaries explored what went wrong, revealing that most musical guests cancelled and attendees faced long waits and poor conditions before the event was abandoned. The festival's organizer, Billy McFarland, was later sentenced to six years in prison for fraud. Local Bahamian workers who helped prepare also lost money from the failed event. The disaster demonstrated the importance of vetting music festivals and organizers thoroughly before purchasing tickets.

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The Fyre Festival: an exclusive music festival turned disaster

By: Sara Lawrence

The Fyre Festival was promoted as a luxury, star-studded music festival in Spring 2017 on the
Exuma island of the Bahamas. Millennials spent thousands of dollars to secure their spot at the
highly anticipated event. It was expected to be the best of the best. However, attendants felt
scammed and disappointed when they arrived to a campground of hurricane tents on barren site.

Two documentaries have brought the catastrophic event back into the light. Hulu’s Fyre Fraud
and Netflix’s Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened were released in early 2019 and
went behind the scenes of the Fyre Festival fiasco.

Back in 2017, the festival promised attendees private jet travel, beach front villas, gourmet
dining and many popular musical guests. According to Business Insider, “Blink-182, Major
Lazer, Migos, Tyga and Disclosure were among the artists scheduled to perform.” However,
most of these artists cancelled their appearances at the festival due to its unreliable and
unprofessional appearance.

Other promises of the festival were also not met. Guests were scheduled to a commercial flight
and when they arrived on the island, they waited for hours until they were led to the site. The
beach front villas were actually hurricane tents and the gourmet food was bread, cheese and
lettuce. Guests immediately began looking for the next flight out of Exuma. The event was
cancelled quickly.

Many people wasted a fortune on this failed festival, and many have still not been refunded for
their losses. According to BBC News, Tickets cost up to $100,000. Bahamian workers employed
for the festival accomodations lost as well. The Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party
that Never Happened , included interviews with some of the workers that were affected by the
fiasco.

“They invested a lot of money, and that was what I was looking at, the investment that went
forward. It was no way they were gonna have you do all this work and not pay you and it's not
going to come off well,” MaryAnn, restaurant owner on the island of Exuma, said.

The Bahamian workers put in weeks of effort to try to pull together the event, but with their
limited supplies, time and direction, they could not uphold the luxury stay guests has been
promised. As a result, the Bahamian workers were not paid for their efforts and MarryAnn Rolle
took $50,000 out of her savings in order to pay some of the workers who helped her cook for the
hundreds of stranded guests.
The man behind it all, Billy McFarland, who co-founded the Fyre Festival, got in immense legal
trouble for his fraud. According to NBC News, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison
for fraud. Altogether, McFarland cost the Fyre Festival attendees, Bahamian workers and Fyre
Media Inc investors millions. Models including Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Emily
Ratajkowski, Elsa Hosk and Hailey Bieber have also come under fire for advertising the festival
and starring in a promotional video that set many of the expectations that were not met.

The lesson learned from the Fyre Festival specifically applies to young adults who are concert
buffs or who frequent festivals. Those involved learned that you have to be very careful with
what you spend your money on and where you choose to go to these events. Making sure the
festival is organized under a trustworthy company and has a record of being safe and advertised
correctly is extremely important when buying tickets and planning for your next getaway.

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