A Seinfeld-themed pop-up bar that was expected to make its Toronto debut on Friday has become an event about nothing.

One of the organizers, Mackenzie Keast, says the event wasn’t a scam, merely an ambitious idea that couldn’t find funding. He says he’s still hopeful it will one day be a reality.

The party made a splash among fans of the ’90s sitcom when it was first announced in February. Its Facebook page — still online as of Thursday evening — promised a look-alike Monk’s Diner set-up with “Kenny Rogers Chicken, calzones, No Soup For You, big salads, sexy pastramis, marble rye sandwiches chocolate babka, muffin tops. . .”

The launch was to include a $300 prize for the best Seinfeld costume and a “little kicks dance-off,” and was widely covered in the media. Nearly 10,000 people on Facebook said they would attend, and another 24,000 indicated they were “interested.”

Keast, who spoke to the Star at a café in the Distillery District Thursday, said it all stemmed from a desire to make a cooler Seinfeld-themed bar than a George Costanza restaurant in Melbourne, which also calls itself “A Bar About Nothing.”

Being an event planner and entrepreneur, Keast built some hype around his planned pop-up, but soon realized making it happen would entail much more than he expected.

“I don’t like feeling like this is something that isn’t going to happen. I want to make it happen. And I want to make it right,” the 29-year-old says.

He and his friends devised a plan to use the money from a ticket pre-sale to build the bar inside a space that had been offered to them for free. Still, Keast was afraid they wouldn’t be able to follow up on the promise.

So, when the tickets went live on June 29, he gave all 250 of them to himself for free, so they automatically sold out. He says those who claimed to have tickets on social media were just his friends “trolling.”

“My hope the whole time was that someone (an investor) was going to come forward or that we would find someone who saw the value in putting this on,” he says.

Keast figured the planned opening date, July 15, would pass and the more than 20,000 people who were waiting for it would think it happened and move on. He regrets not being forthright, but believes it could still be pulled together in weeks with enough capital.

Many caught on that no tickets had actually been sold and complained to Eventbrite, the online seller, which scrubbed the event from its website.

“The Trust & Safety team was unable to confirm the event is taking placeand therefore took appropriate steps to un-publish it from our platform at this time,” Amanda Livingood, a spokesperson for Eventbrite, told the Star in an email.

Jake Gorman, a 35-year-old who runs a Seinfeld-themed trivia night, tried to get tickets, too. He’d reached out to the organizers in the winter to see if they could collaborate somehow.

He and Keast exchanged a couple brief emails, but nothing came of it, Gorman said.

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“I don’t think they were ever on sale,” Gorman said, adding he was surprised by the initiative’s ambitious pledge and thought they’d gotten in over their heads.

“It’s disappointing. It would have been an awesome event.”