9 of the most shocking revelations from Netflix’s Fyre Festival documentary

From Digital Spy

The crystal, turquoise waters and ivory-sand beaches of the Bahamas don't sound like a hellscape, but they will certainly be remembered as one, as the heavenly island of Great Exuma swiftly morphed into what could only be described as an apocalyptic scene when night fell over Fyre Festival, the greatest party that never happened.

The festival was the brainchild of "entrepreneur" Billy McFarland and hip-hop mogul Ja Rule. The pair had identified what they described as a blindspot in the talent-booking industry and decided to create their own marketplace. People could go to their platform, scroll through the talent available, and book artists for parties and events – “the uber of booking talent".

The festival was simply a way to promote their new venture and draw attention to the bigger brand, inviting industry professionals and influencers to make a lot of noise about Fyre Media's latest project, and join them for "the cultural event of the decade".

“Me and Billy are going to change the way people look at a young tech entrepreneur and a hip-hop mogul, come together and create something incredible," boasted Ja Rule.

We can now all agree that the rapper's statement has since taken on a whole new level of meaning in light of what happened.

The festival was an unmitigated disaster, as documented fervently on social media, so much so that Netflix decided to record everything that happened from the very beginning until the bitter end for your viewing pleasure, horror and utter disbelief – and there are revelations aplenty.

Here are the biggest…

1. There was a complete lack of planning and infrastructure

The island couldn’t physically hold the number of people who had purchased tickets. A man called Keith van der Linde was brought on to the team to share his knowledge and insight, advising Billy and co on how to build the necessary infrastructure for the festival – such as, you know, toilets and places to sleep.

Keith said fairly early on in the process that he didn't think it was possible to fit more than 1,000 people on the island, but according to The Guardian roughly 5,000 people had purchased tickets.

Billy had sold villa packages without checking that there were physically enough properties available, and roughly 250 social media influencers had been told that they would be housed for free. There was also a promise of private yachts, none of which ever existed, let alone materialised – and when everything started to implode, the sketches on the website which illustrated to festival-goers where they would be staying were removed.

Despite raising a number of other concerns, and strongly recommending against using leftover hurricane tents following the fiasco surrounding the accommodation, Keith was asked to no longer be a part of the project.

Keith also claims that other staff members were let go.

One day before the festival, there were still not enough beds to safely house people, and no charter flights had been booked back to Miami, where people were flying out from – which meant that the attendees would essentially be at the mercy of the organisers when it all went wrong.

Which it did.

When the festival was officially cancelled, the local airport became overwhelmed, so much so that festival-goers were locked in overnight without any food or water.

And that wasn't the only waiting around that people were forced to endure. When the ticket holders first arrived on the island, Billy and co attempted to stall them entering the festival site by taking them to wait at a restaurant on the beach.

And there they stayed for six long hours, with very little, if any, information about what was happening.

2. The festival site was changed just weeks before people were due to arrive

The original festival site was Norman’s Cay, the headquarters for Pablo Escobar’s smuggling point man, Carlos Lehder. The owner of the island was trying to distance itself from that image and establish a new reputation, specifically instructing the Fyre team not to use the name Pablo Escobar in the promotional material.

But they splashed it all over the advertising regardless, and were kicked off the island a couple of months before the festival was due to begin, which meant that they had to find a brand new location and begin the process all over again.

According to Andy King, an event producer and Billy's friend, the design and fundraising required for a proper music festival should ideally begin 12 months out. The creative director and technical production crew were contacted just 45 days out, and they estimated that the entire venture would cost Billy roughly $38 million.

After an extensive search, they settled on Great Exuma, the biggest island in the district of the Bahamas known as Exuma – it's not a private island, something which the attendees were also promised. And in the promotional material, they Photoshopped out a portion of the map to make it look like the guests would be on a desert island.

3. Oral sex was promised in exchange for a very big favour

Andy was asked to “take one big thing for the team”: to pretend to be their “wonderful gay leader” and “suck dick to fix this water problem”.

There were four shipping containers filled with Evian water but Andy had missed a meeting with customs about releasing it. Customs had then told Billy that he needed to pay $157,000 in cash for it to be released, and when it looked like that couldn’t be done, Billy asked Andy to perform oral sex on a customs official in exchange for the water.

Andy, despite his extreme discomfort, was fully prepared to do so, even though it didn't come to that in the end. He also admitted that he suffered from "some kind of post-traumatic syndrome" following his involvement.

4. The Bahamian locals weren't paid for their work

Andy claims that the head of construction went looking for him and demanded $26,000 in cash. He then went on to follow Andy, demanding payment, as did the head of the Bahamian tourist board, the minister for finance and the head of the university, who wanted a total of $1million.

Another employee discusses how an angry mob of about 30 local people approached the production house, in which there were five staff members from Fyre, demanding payment for their work.

According to another man involved in the festival, after the locals realised that they weren’t going to be paid, they began “putting hits out on people”, either to take them hostage and get a ransom, or just to hurt them.

With all this happening, Andy traded clothes with one of the employees, hid behind a urinal while a car pulled up and jumped inside, speeding out of the village to safety.

Bahamian restaurateur Maryann Rolle claimed that she had to use $50,000 of her own savings to cover catering costs that Billy should have covered, but didn’t. And according to the documentary, there were roughly $250,000 in day wages owed to the Bahamian locals who helped build the festival.

Bear that in mind when you consider that Billy and co had said that the festival would boost the Exuma economy.

5. Billy got his comeuppance, but not before he tried another scam

Billy fraudulently inflated key financial metrics to make it look like the company was doing significantly better than it was in order to fool investors. He reported that bookings for Fyre Festival were $34.8 million when they were actually just $1.5 million, he claimed that he had bought an island in the Bahamas to host the festival, which was also false, and he claimed that he had $2.45 million in Facebook shares – when in fact he only owned $1,499 worth.

And the millions that the company was apparently earning in revenue? Actually less than $60,000.

Eventually, Billy received a sentence of six years in federal prison, as well as a lifetime ban on serving as a corporate officer or director. He pleaded guilty to defrauding 80 investors and a ticket broker out of $26 million.

But before he was locked up, he set up a scam ticketing operation called NYC VIP Access while he was out on bail, in which Fyre Festival attendees and people on the company’s radar were sent emails and contacted via phone about exclusive VIP tickets and events which he simply couldn't deliver – such as the Met Gala and meet-and-greets with Taylor Swift.

According to the documentary, the FBI stated that 15 people had paid Billy over $100,000 for tickets – and further digging also reveals that Billy was heading up other scams, such as a bogus rental company, that offered Hamptons home rentals that he had no access to.

6. The employees were left without jobs and thousands of dollars to pay

According to some of the Fyre Media employees, Billy racked up millions of dollars on the Fyre App Amex card to cover costs for his other business, Magnises, which also went down in flames.

$250,000 was not paid off, which resulted in one Fyre Media employee being sued by Amex. Another employee claimed that they had $150,000 of outstanding fees on their personal account, which they had to find a way to pay back.

In the documentary, we listen to the moment when Billy tells his staff that he won't be firing anybody following the collapse, but there will be no payroll. One employee then says that by not laying people off, staff can't claim unemployment benefits.

Billy denied knowing how such things worked.

7. Ja Rule really didn't seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation

During a company meeting, one employee said that what Fyre Media had done was essentially fraud, but Ja Rule refuted that claim, settling on the term "false advertising".

“We didn’t kill anybody,” he said. “Nobody got hurt. We made a mistake. We’ll get over it.”

Ja Rule then went on to compare the disaster to Samsung’s exploding phones crisis, as well as insisting that they "can’t dwell on how it went wrong".

The rapper eventually went on to launch a new booking platform.

8. A lot of famous people and influencers did very well out of it

A number of supermodels were paid big money for shooting the promotional material, and Kendall Jenner reportedly received a whopping $250,000 to share a single Instagram post advertising the festival.

9. Even the team who worked on the festival wanted Billy to get his just desserts

Consultant Marc Weinstein, who was involved in making the festival happen, said that the night before the festival opened (the site was still unfinished at that point), there was a huge storm in which the mattresses and tents were soaked through and entirely unusable.

And it was during that storm that Marc thought he heard one of the Fyre team say: "At least they won’t get away with it now."

Watch Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened on Netflix from Friday, January 18.

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