LimeWire has officially taken over the notorious Fyre Festival brand. More details are available below.
In July, Fyre founder Billy McFarland revealed that the Fyre Festival brand and its intellectual properties were sold to a bidder on eBay for nearly $250,000. At that time, he mentioned working on a “tech platform aimed at harnessing the value of every online view,” promising it would be “coming soon.”
The winning bidder has now been identified as LimeWire, the revived early 2000s file-sharing platform. Initially launched in 2000 as an illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing site, it was shut down but resurfaced in 2022 as a cryptocurrency venture.
LimeWire’s acquisition of the Fyre brand was confirmed in a press release, noting that both entities are “poised to start a new chapter based on technology, transparency, and a sense of humor.”
LimeWire CEO Julian Zehetmayr stated, “This acquisition isn’t about repeating past mistakes; it’s about preserving one of the internet’s most infamous cultural moments and transforming it into something fresh. Fyre became a symbol of excessive hype, but it also made history.”
Zehetmayr clarified that LimeWire isn’t planning to revive the festival itself: “We are revitalizing the brand and the meme, this time offering genuine experiences—minus the cheese sandwiches.”
LimeWire COO Marcus Feistl echoed this sentiment, saying, “Fyre has come to embody everything that can go wrong. We now have the opportunity to demonstrate what can be achieved when cultural significance is paired with effective execution.”
Interestingly, actor Ryan Reynolds also attempted to acquire the Fyre brand through his creative agency, Maximum Effort, but details of his bid remain undisclosed. He commented on LimeWire’s successful bid, saying, “Congrats to LimeWire for securing Fyre Fest. I look forward to their first event, but I’ll be sure to bring my own water supply.”
The original Fyre Festival, conceived by McFarland eight years ago, was slated to take place over two weekends on a private beach in the Bahamas. The 2017 event promised performances from major artists like Blink-182 and Major Lazer, but it quickly turned into a disaster, with attendees facing horrifying conditions and a lack of basic amenities. This chaotic experience was captured in the acclaimed Netflix documentary FYRE.
In 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison for defrauding investors but was released after just four years in 2022. Plans for a revived Fyre Fest 2 were announced, but those quickly fell apart, leading the local tourism board to deny any knowledge of the festival’s existence.
Before its cancellation, tickets for the planned second festival sold for between $1,400 and $25,000, with premium packages reaching as high as $1.1 million. Concerns had been raised prior to the second festival’s planned dates by former investors about numerous “red flags” surrounding the event.
Moreover, earlier this year, it was reported that the Fyre brand intended to launch a hotel experience in Honduras, marketed as a Caribbean getaway scheduled for September.
