LimeWire outbids Ryan Reynolds to acquire Billy McFarland's Fyre Fest

LimeWire has acquired the infamous Fyre Festival brand on eBay.

As we reported in July, convicted fellon and Fyre founder Billy McFarland announced that the brand and all of its IPs had been sold to a bidder for just under a quarter of a million dollars. McFarland shared at the time that he was disappointed with the sum, but that he was working on a “tech platform designed to capture and power the value behind every view online.”

The identity of the winning bidder was not disclosed.

Now, it has been revealed that LimeWire, the revived early 2000s pirating platform, acquired the Fyre brand. The purchase was confirmed in a press release per Deadline, which reads: “Once synonymous with disruption in their own very different ways, LimeWire and Fyre are now poised to begin an entirely new chapter – one grounded in technology, transparency, and a sense of humour.”

LimeWire CEO Julian Zehetmayr said: “LimeWire’s acquisition is not about repeating past mistakes – it’s about saving one of the internet’s most infamous cultural memes from extinction and turning it into something new. Fyre became a symbol of hype gone wrong, but it also made history.”

Zehetmayr clarified that “we’re not bringing the festival back – we’re bringing the brand and the meme back to life. This time with real experiences, and without the cheese sandwiches.”

LimeWire was initially launched in 2000 as an illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing and pirating platform. It was ultimately shut down, but resurfaced as a crypto company in 2022.

So, a previously sunken ship buying a brand associated with viral and notorious scam? Best of luck.

It is also reported that Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds’ creative agency Maximum Effort was one of the bidders for the Fyre brand - though the amount it offered remains disclosed.

Reynolds said of LimeWire’s winning bid in a statement, per Rolling Stone: “Congrats to LimeWire for their winning bid for Fyre Fest. I look forward to attending their first event but will be bringing my own palette of water.” 

As a reminder, McFarland founded Fyre Festival with rapper Ja Rule. As part of their advertising scheme for the supposed luxury music festival, they employed influencers including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski to post on Instagram about the festival.

The influencers didn’t clearly disclose that it was a paid advert.

McFarland falsely claimed that the festival’s location was on Pablo Escobar’s private island when in reality it was located on a beach in the Bahamas. When the glamorous (and wannabe glamorous) flocked to McFarland’s promised luxury event in 2017, all was not as it seemed. They were confronted with unfinished stages, tents instead of fancy accommodation, and a notoriously rubbish welcome meal of some pre-sliced cheese and a depressing-looking salad on dry bread. As for the star-studded line-up of acts, including Pusha T, Tyger, Blink-182, Disclosure, Migos, and Skepta, they all pulled out.

To make matters worse, the 500+ guests were stranded on the island, as flights were cancelled by the Bahamian government.

The ordeal was captured in the Netflix documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, as well as the Hulu doc Fyre Fraud.

McFarland and Ja Rule were hit with multiple lawsuits for fraud and other charges seeking damages.

McFarland was investigated by the FBI for mail fraud, wire fraud and securities fraud. After pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud, he was sentenced to six years in prison sentence in 2018 and ordered to hand over $26 million.

He was released early in 2022 and since then, McFarland reportedly arranged meetings with rappers for Donald Trump’s most recent election campaign – in a bid to reach and appeal to more Black voters. And because once a scammer, always a hardened scammer, McFarland previously tried to revive the festival – adventurously named Fyre Fest II.

It was also announced that the second edition of the festival would be taking place on a tropical island off Cancún, Mexico. However, it was soon revealed that the permit McFarland had obtained only allowed for a 12-hour listening party that only could have fewer than 300 people.

McFarland set the tickets for between $1,400 (€1,200) and $25,000 (€21,500) – with “premium packages” priced as high as $1.1 million (€947,000).

As you can guess, the Fyre Fest II never took place.

Now that the rights to the Fyre brand have been sold, is anyone else fearing the outcome of “bringing the brand and the meme back to life” and McFarland’s new tech platform?