Billy McFarland is selling Fyre Festival—on eBay.
On Monday, the festival founder announced that he’s auctioning off the rights to the Fyre Festival brand. “Today, I am taking the most famous festival brand, Fyre Festival, and putting it up for auction on eBay starting at one cent.”
He said he’s received “upwards of 1,000 offers” to buy the Fyre branding throughout the years, and claimed that a recent multi-million dollar deal didn’t pan out, urging him to publicly sell it on eBay.
“Since its inception, Fyre has had over 32 billion impressions online,” McFarland said. “Whoever gets this will have an attention engine to launch festivals, do merch collabs, do pop-ups, run livestreams, or build a media brand.”
As of this writing, 115 bids have been placed on eBay for the festival rights, with the highest bid currently at $205,700.
According to Vibe, Billy has inked a deal with media entrepreneur Shawn Rech to use Fyre Fest trademarks across multiple verticals, including a music streaming service, broad channel, and app.
Rech—who co-founded the TruBlu streaming service and is a documentary filmmaker—said that his company was given the option to buy the rights to the festival but said it’s “not a priority now.”
Fyre Festival became infamous in 2017, initially promising an upscale experience for attendees. It ended in disaster and was later the subject of documentaries on Netflix and Hulu. McFarland was convicted of wire fraud; he was released in 2022 after spending less than four years in jail.
