The Fyre Festival has reached a settlement with 277 ticketholders from the famously disastrous 2017 concert-that-never-happened, with each recipient being awarded $7,220 payouts. The settlement between the ticketholders and the trustee of Fyre festival assets was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday; the news was first reported by Billboard.
Ben Meiselas of Geragos and Geragos, lead attorney for the class-action suit, told PvNew, “It’s a small but significant step for ticketholders who were defrauded and had their lives up ended as a result of the fraudulent conduct by [Fyre founder Billy] McFarland.” He added that because there are multiple creditors involved in the chaotic aftermath of the festival, each ticketholder may not receive the full $7,220, but “there will be monetary relief in some form or fashion pending approval.”
A hearing is set for May 13 to approve the settlement.
The festival was positioned as a luxury concert event featuring Migos, Disclosure, Blink-182, Major Lazer and others by McFarland and his business partner, rapper Ja Rule. It was scheduled to take place over two weekends in the spring of 2017 on the island of Exumas in the Bahamas, with ticket prices ranging between $1,000 and $12,000. It was advertised with a splashy video ad filled with models luxuriating on yachts and sun-kissed beaches on an island purportedly formerly owned by Pablo Escobar (who actually never owned an island in the Bahamas).
Instead, attendees who had been promised luxury accommodation and meals prepared by celebrity chefs found flimsy tents, boxed lunches and near-total disorganization — and long waits for flights to return to the mainland after airlines began refusing to fly would-be concertgoers to the overcrowded island of Exumas. The event was marred by “incompetence on an inconceivable scale,” according to one of several people hired for the event who spoke with PvNew.
No performances took place; amid a litany of legal offenses, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018.
