A Honduras-based lodge proprietor says he’s reviving the Fyre Festival model alongside Billy McFarland as a pop-up expertise at his island resort, marking the newest twist in a weird saga.
Heath Miller, a former New York live performance promoter and one-time supervisor of Webster Corridor in Manhattan, says he reached an settlement with McFarland to stage a 300-to-400-person Fyre Resort Pop-Up at his lodge, Coral Villa Utila, positioned on the island of Utila, one of Honduras’ famed Bay Islands within the Caribbean. The occasion will run from Sept. 3-10.
Tickets are low cost: Simply e-book a room at Miller’s 25-room resort, and a go for Fyre is included. Rooms begin at $198 per night time for singles, $329 for {couples}, $399 for triples and $449 for the lodge’s four-bed room.
Miller is fast to level out that the September occasion is just not being billed as Fyre Festival II, including that tickets from that occasion gained’t get you entry to the Fyre Resort Pop-Up, which he says can be extra low key than what had been deliberate for Fyre’s comeback competition in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. There can be dwell leisure, though Miller notes that he hasn’t secured any expertise but and says the competition gained’t have a big price range or a splashy lineup.
“This occasion isn’t for an artist trying for a $100,000 payment,” he says. “Truthfully, for me, it is a promotional car for my lodge and it performs into my grand plan — I’m engaged on writing a e-book on my music profession, and the e-book was supposed to finish final June [with a story about] Jack Antonoff in Asbury Park. However as an alternative, I assume Fyre goes to be the ultimate chapter of the e-book.”
In Miller’s estimation, the controversy across the disastrous 2018 competition — which garnered worldwide headlines when ticketholders arrived on a Bahamian island to seek out that the promised luxurious occasion had not been realized — might in the end be the largest draw.
“Fyre Festival is a tainted model that clearly has a horrible repute, however on the finish of the day, this model can create press and consciousness higher than Coachella can,” he says.
Miller has been managing the lodge since 2019 for his late father, who purchased the island resort within the Nineties. He says his concept for the Fyre pop-up is partially impressed by Sixthman, the live performance and cruise ships firm owned by Norwegian Cruise Strains that levels music-themed cruises for artists like Lindsay Stirling, Joe Bonamassa and comic Nate Bargatze.
“Initially, I wished to do fan membership and occasions right here,” on Utila, says Miller, who hoped to match music with scuba diving and water excursions. He provides, “Followers need to interact with the artist in distinctive and alternative ways and see them play in distinctive settings,” noting that the Fyre pop-up introduced a uncommon alternative to construct proof of idea.
Beneath the phrases of their settlement, McFarland maintains full possession of Fyre, and Miller will function venue supervisor and website host.
Miller says he’s already secured permits and native approval for the Fyre Resort Pop-Up and stated he hopes the famed competition model creates some optimistic buzz for Utila. The island is standard year-round with scuba divers and snorkelers who go to the island to swim with sharks and discover the 600-mile-long Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, however it isn’t as well-known as different Caribbean locations like Barbados, St. Lucia, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Miller provides he’s properly conscious of McFarland’s previous failures with Fyre Festival, most famously with the disastrous first version in 2018, which left a whole bunch of followers briefly trapped on Grand Exuma island. McFarland masterminded the occasion, in keeping with the FBI, convincing followers to shell out hundreds for luxurious lodging that turned out to be emergency tents and gourmand meals that have been little greater than cheese sandwiches.
McFarland went to jail after admitting to stealing $26 million from traders for the occasion and has been working to repay them since being launched from jail in 2022 after serving 4 years of his six-year sentence. Whereas serving in solitary confinement, McFarland got here up with the concept for a sequel to Fyre, which he had hoped would restore his picture, and bounced round completely different websites within the Bahamas and Mexico earlier than touchdown on Playa del Carmen close to Cancun. McFarland in the end employed Mexican agency Misplaced Nights to provide the occasion and staged a press convention on March 27 with native officers to spotlight it.
Nevertheless, issues went south in April when metropolis leaders from Playa del Carmen introduced that no permits for Fyre Festival had been issued within the seaside city. McFarland responded by releasing pictures of permits that he stated proved Fyre was occurring, however he later pulled the plug on the occasion and refunded ticket holders. On April 24, McFarland introduced he was promoting Fyre’s belongings and mental property and had reached an settlement with a streaming service to license the title.
Miller says McFarland retains the title for Fyre and has a core staff of a half-dozen people working with him, together with his long-time companion, Michael Falb.
“I’m properly conscious of Billy’s previous and I feel it’s essential that we’re clear about what occurred. I personally met with the mayor of Utila when securing the permits for this occasion and even confirmed him the documentaries about Fyre Festival,” Miller stated of the movies FYRE: The Biggest Social gathering That By no means Occurred and Fyre Fraud, each of which have been launched in 2019 and chronicled the competition’s rise and fall.
“Billy has points and one of his largest flaws is that he tends to belief folks greater than he ought to,” Miller says, noting that McFarland reminds him of himself when he was a younger promoter working New York’s nightlife circuit as an unbiased live performance promoter, each for himself and for John Scher’s Metropolitan Live shows and later Webster Corridor. Miller notes he labored with McFarland previous to Fyre Festival, when McFarland was working millennial VIP firm Magnises.
“He by no means stiffed me on a invoice — we at all times acquired paid what we have been owed,” Miller says. “I have a look at Billy’s errors and I ask myself what I might have carried out if I used to be controlling tens of millions of {dollars} for an enormous get together. I don’t know. What I can let you know about Billy is that he a giant child at coronary heart that actually simply needs to throw the world’s best get together.”
To purchase tickets and be taught extra go to fyrehotels.com.
