Failed Fyre Fest Creator Billy McFarland Actually Put On a Festival

Say what you will about Billy McFarland, the man refuses to stay down. After the infamous 2017 Fyre Festival disaster that became the gold standard for spectacular failure (and a couple of Netflix documentaries), followed by a half-baked “Fyre Fest 2” announcement that went exactly nowhere, most people assumed McFarland’s days of throwing parties on tropical islands were over especially after serving four years in federal prison for fraud.

Yet on Saturday night in Roatán, Honduras, something wild happened: an actual music festival with McFarland’s name on it took place. No luxury villas made of FEMA tents, no cheese sandwiches passed off as gourmet catering; just a stage, some lights, working toilets, and real human beings performing in front of real human beings. Billy called it PHNX presumably based on wordplay because the event “rose” from ashes.

French Montana headlined, Bobby Shmurda threw down one of his first performances since getting out years ago, and Slim Jxmmi of Rae Sremmurd also showed up and did his thing. The artists got paid (presumably), flew in, and left without tweeting “this is the worst day of my life,” which already puts PHNX in the 99th percentile of Billy McFarland productions.

From the livestream (a very 2025 move: charging $6.99 for a shaky POV cam that peaked at roughly 100 viewers), a crowd that looks like a hundred people looked intimate but more like a college house party on a beach. There were power cuts and some awkward moments when the artists begged for crowd energy that simply wasn’t there.

In other words: it wasn’t anything flawless or extravagant, and whoever bankrolled flying French Montana to Central America almost certainly lost money. But planes took off, planes landed, the show went on, nobody got stranded, and no federal indictments appear to be incoming. Based on this, it was a success story that Billy managed to throw an event. Not so much a festival from what we see in today’s industry standard, so there’s that.

H/T: link