The Fyre Festival

The Fyre Festival

The Fyre Festival was billed as one of the most celebrated festivals of the year, equalling the status of such events as Coachella (Burrough). The brains behind this fete were a twenty-five year old millennial Billy McFarland and American Rapper Ja Rule. However, as a result of poor planning and management, it turned out to be a fiasco with investors, service providers losing their hard earned money, and revelers getting stranded on some island in the Bahamas.This attracted backlash from the general public. After that, dozens of lawsuits were filed against the event organizers, even attracting investigation from the Federal government. This essay attempts to explain the reason that led to the failure of the Fyre Festival and what can be learned from it.

We shall begin by giving a chronology of the events leading to the Festival. Billy McFarland and Ja Rule announce their idea to the world at the end of 2016. They promise to stage an exclusive concert on the remote Island in the Caribbean once owned by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. World-renowned artists were billed to perform. To kick off their plans, they enlist the services of supermodels Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner. Together with their colleagues, they are featured in a promotional video about the Festival. Influencers are also hired to hype the event on social media to give them more credibility.

After the initial marketing campaign, it finally hits the event organizers. They had marketed a non-existent venue, “Fyre Cay.” They had to plead with the Bahamian government, which allowed them to hold the event at Roker point a waterside development under construction. The ticket sales were at five thousand strong, and event producers were hired to set up the site for the Festival. Despite the complain about the lack of time for proper organisation of the event Billy McFarland refused to pushed forward the concert. On the eve of the Festival, it rained heavily, slogging up the whole site event, making it impossible for any activity to take place. McFarland bailed out, leaving the festival attendees to find their way out of the Island.

The initial goal for the Fyre Festival was great. It was promoting the Fyre app, McFarland’s talent booking application. What better way than organize a festival that shows how the application works to the target market. That is the event organizers, revelers, and performing artists.

The main reason why the Fyre festival failed was the lack of a proper planning process. The promised luxury accommodation that includes private villas was lacking, he caterer for the event bailed out of the last minute. The event was dubbed as high end in the league of Coachella, but it did not have the resources to pull it off.

The event did not carry out due diligence on the budget required for the event. Dan  Berkowitz, CEO of CID, an events management company approached by McFarland, posits that the preparations of the Fyre event provoked a lot of criticism. On the event’s website, they promised to fly everyone from Miami to the Bahamas in private jets yet did not give details of how they will do it. It seemed that they could not deliver what they promised (Burrough).

The festival organizers did not understand their target market, which was the affluent Millenials.They promised to offer exclusive luxury accommodation, which they could not deliver, causing a huge uproar and backlash.

The technical events of the concert were ignored, which included; the location of the event ending up being waterlogged on the eve of the Festival, Lack of transportation for the people attending the event, the promise of high end catering only to give their revelers cold sandwiches.

The Fyre Festival is a case study on how not to organize a concert. All the elements of organizing a successful concert were ignored from planning, budgeting, and venue preparation. As a result, this led to a disaster of epic proportions.

Works cited

Burrough, B. (2017, June 29). Fyre Festival: Anatomy of a Millennial Marketing Fiasco Waiting to Happen [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/fyre-festival-billy-mcfarland-millennial-marketing-fiasco

Chris Smith (Director). (2019, January 18). “Fyre Festival: The Greatest Party That Never Existed” [Television broadcast]. Netflix.