Fyre festival attendees to receive $7,000 each in settlement
A group of 277 attendees at the notorious Fyre festival are to receive settlement payouts of $7,220 (£5,240) each after the conclusion of a lawsuit against the organisers.
The 2017 event drew global attention after the supposedly luxury music experience, promoted by supermodels and set to feature artists such as
Major Lazer and Migos, turned out to resemble a disaster relief camp with windswept tents and decidedly nongourmet food. Attendees had spent between $1,000 and $12,000 on tickets to the festival, which was cancelled on its opening day.
Organiser Billy McFarland apologised and said he was “committed to, and working actively to, find a way to make this right”. Numerous lawsuits were filed against him and his co-organiser, the rapper Ja Rule, and McFarland was arrested in June 2017. He pleaded guilty to numerous fraud charges relating to the festival and his company NYC VIP Access, which sold fake tickets to events such as the Met Gala. He was sentenced to six years in prison in October 2018. Ja Rule was cleared of wrongdoing a year later.
The latest lawsuit ruling, at the US bankruptcy court in New York, is still subject to a vote of approval, which will take place on 13 May, and there remains the chance that the the payout figure could be lower depending on Fyre’s bankruptcy case with other creditors.
In 2018, a judge ruled in favour of attendees Seth Crossno and Mark Thompson in another lawsuit against the festival, awarding the pair $5m in damages.