Billy McFarland sits in the back of a pickup truck, a breeze blowing through his slicked-back hair. As the 33-year-old rides along the bumpy roads of the Caribbean island of Utila in Honduras, he holds up his phone and films himself.
“It’s happening, folks,” McFarland exclaims, almost shouting into the camera. “French Montana is the headliner of the 2025 Phoenix Festival!”
400 guests on a Caribbean island, hundreds of thousands watching virtually. An unforgettable exclusive event for wealthy clients, influencers, and music fans. That’s Billy McFarland’s vision, anyways — and yes, it sounds a lot like his high-profile failure with the Fyre Festival in 2017, which eventually landed him in prison.
In a phone call, McFarland tells Business Insider that this time is different. But convincing people to plunk down their money on a McFarland venture is likely to be a tough sell.
McFarland, who grew up in a wealthy New Jersey entrepreneurial family, was released from prison more than two years early in 2022. He’s been in Honduras for several weeks, and preparations for his festival, now re-named to “Phoenix,” or PHNX, are in full swing. While French Montana’s management did not respond to a request to confirm his participation in the festival, the artist recently posted an ad for PHNX on his Instagram page.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Fyre Fest debacle, the short version goes like this: As a result of botched preparations, a lack of money, and several breaches of contract, the festival turned into a viral failure and led to McFarland getting hit with fraud charges. A later released documentary on Netflix shows how hundreds of guests who had traveled to a remote Bahamian island were eventually evacuated and confined in an airport terminal because there was virtually no accommodation or sanitation facilities at the festival site. Concerts did not take place, and the organizing team fled the island.
It was a festival-goers nightmare, to put it mildly, and in March 2018, the McFarland pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges and was sentenced to six years in prison in the state of Ohio and ordered to pay his victims $26 million.
The festival, which spawned Hulu and Netflix documentaries, has long since become a running joke on the internet, overshadowing McFarland’s second attempt at a “Fyre Fest 2” in Mexico, which fell through even after his insistence that “it will definitely happen.”
Speaking to Business Insider from a hotel room in Honduras on Monday evening, McFarland seemed cheerful and answered questions without hesitation. He says that the plan for a Fyre Fest 2 in Mexico did not work out because he was not allowed to leave the US due to court restrictions and the local government pulled its support after reading some critical reports following his announcement of the event.
Now, he’s trying once again — this time with a new name: PHNX 2025. The festival is scheduled to begin on December 6 in Utila Bay, an island about 30 kilometers off the coast of Honduras. Some divers are regularly drawn there, and the remote island is also popular with fishermen and backpackers. However, the infrastructure for a major event is lacking — as was the case with the 2017 Fyre Festival. Utila has a population of just under 3,000 and can be reached by ferry from the nearest island or via a mini airport, which is little more than a bumpy runway in the middle of the jungle.
For several weeks now, there has been an unusual amount of hustle and bustle on the island, which covers just 42 square kilometers. McFarland posts videos of the preparations and construction work almost daily. Local workers can be seen building a wooden stage. While festival guests are staying in hotels, as McFarland explains, the concerts are to take place on an even smaller offshore island connected by water taxi.
Regular tickets to PHNX cost $599; but for an eye-watering $140,000, guests can get a VIP pass, including round-trip flights from Miami.
In a matter of days, it will become clear whether the festival will actually take place as announced. McFarland now says that all artists have received their advance payments for PHNX and that the contracts have been signed.
Reflecting on his Fyre failure, McFarland says he’s remorseful.
“I made mistakes back then, and the criticism is justified,” he tells Business Insider. “My biggest offense was lying to the investors.”
He also says that he is in the process of paying back his debt to ex business partners and claims that almost all of the money that he owed to contractors in the Bahamas, who built the Fyre Festival site in 2017, has been paid.
McFarland says there are no major investors for the “Phoenix” festival.
“There are three pillars,” he says. First, ticket sales—the revenue from which is unlikely to be anywhere near enough to pay the artists due to the low number of tickets sold. Secondly, there are pay-per-view tickets, of which the organizers want to sell “hundreds of thousands” (McFarland declined to provide specific figures on actual sales when asked). And third, McFarland says he signed a deal with a production company that is filming a reality show on the island.
McFarland is no stranger to cameras. During the preparations for the Fyre Festival, he had cameras follow him around constantly, and parts of the footage were later shown in a Netflix documentary. The film, which chronicles the epic failure of the organizing team, reached an audience of millions worldwide. (McFarland himself says he has never seen the documentary.)
In an interesting twist, a Fyre-branded festival could actually take place in the future, separate to PHNX.
McFarland recently sold the “Fyre” trademark rights to Lime Wire, the once-popular file-sharing platform that was shut down amid a piracy crackdown, for $245,000. Nevertheless, he says he remains associated with the brand through licensing agreements.
The new rights holders are also planning a separate, unrelated music festival — and are advertising it with McFarland’s failure and the inglorious history of the name.
“Fyre Festival now belongs to Lime Wire,” says the website with a Mexican domain. “Fyre is back — and this time it’s really worth being there.”
https://fyre.mx/
“Two infamous names, one comeback story,” says the website, which also sells Fyre-branded merch. “What could possibly go wrong?”
McFarland has proven that the answer can be “quite a lot.” But, as his PHNX efforts prove, he’s not afraid to try again — and again.
