Music

Fyre Festival Promoter Billy McFarland Bought Blink-182 a $160k Yacht

Remember Fyre Festival? Remember when that was a thing? People who had spent thousands of dollars, promised luxury villas in the Bahamas, ending up stranded with tents, pre-made sandwiches, and no music or entertainment? You know, the week everyone laughed at rich people on Twitter? Of course you remember.

Since things uh… unfolded last April, the festival has been the subject of federal investigations into legal wrongdoing, and its promoter, 26-year-old Billy McFarland, yesterday plead guilty to wire fraud in a Manhattan federal court. The plea means that MacFarland will serve eight to ten years in prison.

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Just before McFarland entered that plea, Page Six also reported that according to sources and bank statements they had seen, McFarland had spent $160,000 on a yacht for festival headliners Blink-182, who didn’t actually end up playing. In the scheme of things, $160,000 is quite a lot to spend on a yacht when your festival doesn’t have running water, isn’t it? So while it might not be much help now, I thought of some other stuff that might actually have been a bit more helpful than, you know, a boat.

1) Better quality cheese

#neverforget

2) Towels

Page Six also holds that despite the fact that the festival had no running water (bears repeating, doesn’t it?), MacFarlane’s accounts state that he spent $18,000 on towels. Honestly if you’re gonna spend that much on pointless bits of material (no running water therefore no need for drying) then honestly you might as well just spunk the whole $160,000 on them.

3) Three (3) cloned dogs

Barbra Streisand cloning her dog is the best thing that has happened this year and if I am honest I just wanted to talk about it again. Billy McFarland could just have cloned a dog ($50,000 for the privilege) three times instead, and this whole sorry mess might never have happened.

4) A business advisor

“I grossly underestimated the resources that would be necessary to hold an event of this magnitude,” said McFarland in court. There are professionals who coulda helped you with that, guy.

5) Literally anything useful

Now I don’t know about you but in general I don’t get much use out of yachts, because the city I live in is landlocked. I’m no geographer but I’d say that’s true of a lot of cities. The question here is: do Blink-182 need a yacht as much as, say, your festival needs running water, or as badly as the people who have bought tickets to your event following the promise of being provided with luxury villas to stay in need those brick and mortar structures, instead of, you know, tents? I’d say they don’t.

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