Oop! #Socialites, were you one of those people to help sell out the “Fyre Festival 2?” According to creator and organizer Billy McFarland, tickets are sold out for the new event after he officially announced it on Sunday (August 20). Reminder, this is after McFarland’s fraud conviction for the original 2017 Fyre Fest mess.
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It’s been a little more than a year since the Fyre Fest founder was released from prison, McFarland has announced that Fyre Festival II is in the works and tickets are already pretty much gone. As we’ve previously reported, in 2018 McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting to defrauding investors and scamming festival-goers for 2017’s Fyre Festival, launched and promoted by McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, respectively.
With the rapper’s help, the huge extravaganza was marketed by tons of A-list celebrities as a luxury and exclusive music event set to take place in The Bahamas. However, when thousands of influencers and rich kids made their way to the island, they all were met with a much different reality. After dropping hundreds to thousands of dollars on the tickets themselves, plus airfare and more, festival-goers ended up in a disaster.
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The lush on-site accommodations turned out to be tents on the beach, and their five-star meals turned out to be cheese sandwiches served in styrofoam containers. Clearly and rightfully upset, everyone took to social media and blasted the festival and its organizers. In May 2022, McFarland was released from prison to a halfway house in New York. At the time, his attorney Jason Russo said his client’s post-fraud conviction focus was on finding “the best way to generate income to pay his restitution back and make amends.”
In November 2022, McFarland would apologize for his role in the disastrous festival, telling Good Morning America, “I let people down. I let down employees. I let down their families. I let down investors. So I need to apologize. I’m wrong and it’s bad.” Stemming from the infamous fiasco, were two documentaries released in 2018: Netflix’s ‘FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened‘ and Hulu’s ‘Fyre Fraud.’
RELATED: Ja Rule Auctioning NFT Of Infamous Fyre Festival Cheese Sandwich Tweet
Since last year’s apology and his past fraud conviction, McFarland took to his social media on Sunday (August 20) and posted a video claiming that after speaking with “people as far away as the Middle East and South America” about hosting another festival, he had decided to launch the second coming of the 2017 fest, and that it would be “coming back to the Caribbean” some time at the end of 2024.
He said, “This is a big day. It has been the absolute wildest journey to get here, and it really all started during a seventh-month stint in solitary confinement. I wrote out this 50-page plan of how it would take this overall interest and demand in Fyre and how it would take my ability to bring people from around the world together to make the impossible happen.”
In his video, McFarland also acknowledged two other previously announced projects in development regarding his 2017 disaster: a Broadway musical based on the festival, and an Ample Entertainment and Fremantle project called ‘After the Fyre.’
Then on Tuesday (August 22), McFarland took to his account on X (formerly known as Twitter) and said that the presale tickets had already sold out. Per the festival’s website, ticket prices range from $499 to $7,999. Following the tickets being sold out, McFarland added a waitlist link for other eager festival-goers.
RELATED: Ja Rule Says He Is Not Involved In Upcoming Fyre Festival 2: ‘I Don’t Know Nothing About It’
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The post Billy McFarland Says ‘Fyre Festival 2’ Tickets Are Sold Out After Announcing Event Post-Fraud Conviction For 2017 Fyre Fest Mess appeared first on Hollywood Unlocked .
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