Hello Billy, I see you’re trying to put on the best music festival the world has ever seen. Even though you’re 25 and probably know everything in the world, let me give you some pointers and tips on how to plan your festival, may I?

When Fyre Festival news broke out about it being a disaster I started to follow them very closely. I could not believe something could go so wrong. So having been a promoter for 10 years, I decided to plan the festival for them, just out of boredom at my office and along the way prove they would have never been able to pull it off (at least not money wise).

This couple of weeks have been like watching a car crash in slow motion, an odd car crash that is. It’s almost as if it was a go-kart going at 15 mph that eventually crashes into a plastic dumpster a mile away and somehow the it explodes and everything surrounding it catches on fire.

The signs were there since the beginning. A super exclusive festival with tickets going for thousands of dollars that is so successful it has several sales before even revealing the line-up? Check. A professional event with no phone contact, address or quick e-mail replies? Check. A well-planned concert with no scheduled flights days before it starts? Check. Flying people to the site when they clearly know the show is not going to happen? Check.

The go-kart could’ve just steered the wheel a couple of degrees to the opposite direction and avoided collision, but no, it kept going and going and even after the initial crash the driver kept stepping on the gas.

Nevertheless the main question in everyone’s mind, and the question that’s been posted dozens of times in articles on virtually every news and media outlet is: How could this have happened?

Well from what I’ve read, investigated and information I’ve gathered it was a mixture of incompetence, cockiness and stupidity with a dash of grandness.

Even though these guys did everything in the incorrect order, here’s the usual way. This is part one of three (and no I’m not trying to lure you back two more times on purpose, I’m just swamped at work and I can’t wait to share this with you guys). I divided this into pre-production, planning and production. So here’s the first part.

PRE-PRODUCTION

VENUE – the fact that these people didn’t go scouting for a venue/site before daring to announce the festival is mind boggling. I’ve been researching islands in the Bahamas for a couple of weeks and I haven’t found ONE that can hold more than 30 people at a time, so the initial 5,000 people (per weekend) they estimated was NEVER going to happen, not on a Bahamas island at least.

Most disturbing is the fact that they had to come up with some bullcrap story about the fictional island being owned by Pablo Escobar (the drug lord did own an island though…in the Colombian coast…that’s a six hour plane ride from Bahamas).

That being said, the biggest island available for rent (30 people or less as specified on the site) goes for $476,000 a week + $952,000 deposit (source).

That adds up to $1,904,000 per two weeks (and that’s not even counting the time they needed to produce the site and get everything ready).

PERMITS – next on the list would be permits. There a series of permits and licences hat you have to get from the Bahamian government. First there’s a licence to “stage a business event”, this lasts for only 7 days, so they’d need one for each weekend, that’s 50 bucks (source). Even then they’d had to convince the city hall/council to get the event approved. According to an ex-employee I interviewed, they lied to the city call and said the festival would not have more than 300 people.

Anyway, add $50 and a bucket of lies.

BANDS – So you’ve got the site and the permits. But who’s going to play your show. Apparently a band that was relevant in 1999, a group of Jamaican wannabes, a DJ set from two Londoners and let’s see if Kendall can get someone at Kanye’s camp. The rest just select random Soundcloud accounts and ask them if they’d do the show for a few grand. The band fees for one show:

Blink 182 – $750,000

Disclosure (dj set) – $220,000

Major Lazer – $80,000

Pusha T – $50,000

Desiigner – $30,000

Rae Sremmurd – $100,000

Migos – $60,000

Lil Yachty – $35,000

Skepta – $40,000

Kaytranada – $30,000

After that we have 24 more virtually unknown (I’m guessing) DJs, some of which don’t even have a website…and Ja Rule. Again, I had to consult a Fyre Festival ex-employee to help me out with this, she said that some of those acts were not being paid since they were Billy’s friends and the ones who did were offered “around 5K each”. So for the purpose of this exercise let’s just assume half of them were paid 5,000 and the rest didn’t, that’s $60,000 per weekend.

And let’s not forget Ja Rule, who I’m guessing did not get a fee for playing the festival, but if he did he would’ve been paid $25,000.

This gives us $1,480,000 per weekend, totaling $2,960,000 for the whole thing.

And that’s not even counting flights, catering, backline, accommodations, security, working visas, etc. for each of them. If they had any experience they would have asked for an “on site fee” which is when you tell the booking agency you’re not going to be in charge of the artist’s flights (they just add the cost to the fee but you have one less thing to worry about), but apparently “Billy was obsessed with private jets and wanted to fly all of them that way” (again, according to a Fyre ex-employee).

(source).

PS: A lot of people have been questioning the line-up, specially since Major Lazer was schedule to be doing a show in Texas on the second weekend of Fyre Festival. I’ve booked shows before were a band would play one city at 6 PM and then we would fly them to another city to play a midnight show. It’s not that uncommon, although they’d have to be really good at logistics and I think it’s safe to say they’re not.

CELEBRITY CHEF – They also promised attendees would be catered by none other than celebrity chef Stephen Starr. This guy charges up to $100,000 for an appearance and a class, so I had to investigate a little deeper. I contacted his booking agency and I was told that the contract would’ve been “at around $250,000 for both weekends” plus supplies, accommodations, flights, travel expenses for him and his team. They also noted that it’s not like Starr would’ve been preparing omelets for attendees all days, he would’ve just provided the catering and perhaps made an appearance at some point. Think of a wedding with a pre-arranged menu from which people could choose.

TICKETS – Even though I’ve asked a number of people what ticket service was the festival using I get completely different answers. So we’ll have to go on a standard price for this. Usually ticket services like Ticketmaster charge the promoter to sell their tickets, include them in their website, etc. The usual amount is 3% of the ticket price. We’ll take $1,500 as an average Fyre Festival ticket, that’s $45 each. 5,000 tickets x $45 = $225,000 (source).

And by the way, a fun fact. Whenever you register an event on Ticketmaster, you have to sign-up for “sale days” before hand, meaning that if you want to have a “20% off” or “2×1” sale on your tickets at some point before your event you have to register for that before you initially start selling tickets. So their “flash sales” were tickets went for $500 bucks (wow, that’s a 66% off the initial price) were probably planned in advance.

It’s also worth noting that most of the services won’t let you have any money from ticket sales until a couple of days after the event is over. Maybe they didn’t know this?

WRISTBANDS – The real attendee number they expected was 2,500 per weekend (as written down on the organizer’s notebook someone found at Exuma). So that’s 5,000 wristbands + 1,000 backup ones. These are barcoded fabric wristbands, because they wanted to have a cashless event. Each wristband goes for $1.08 bucks, so $6,480 for all (source).

HQ – Now that you have a site, booked bands, figured out the tickets you’ll need to set up shop at the island to start planning logistics, attend council meetings, start receiving all the stuff being shipped from the US (like apparently an ambulance), interview locals for future jobs at the event, etc. You’ll need a small crew, probably 4-6 people in the first weeks and up that as the date gets closer. So you’ll need a house where they can stay, a small office and a place to store everything (again, the fucking ambulance).

I had to use AirBnB for this because renting a house in Exuma is not that easy apparently. So for $20,000 a month you can get this pretty nice place where all employees can stay and it even has a working space and internet, so you’re covered. As for a warehouse I’m starting to think there is no such thing as warehouses in Exuma but you could get a cheap house and store stuff in it I guess for just $3,000 a month. So you need to get people in there at least four months before, so that’s $80,000 for the house and $12,000 for the warehouse.

Oh and I guess these people would need a car to get around, so that’ll set you back $2,500 a month for $10,000 total.

So now you have all the basics to start your festival Billy, the next steps will be hiring experienced people to help with the production, calculate costs of flying back and forth from Exumas, traveling and living expenses for everyone involved, taxes for imports, working permits and visas, accommodations for guests, marketing, influencers, a website, vendors, backline, etc.

So far we’ve spent $5,437,530 and we haven’t even announced the festival yet.

Check back tomorrow for part 2 of 3 of this post.