Fyre Festival Money Pit

Billy McFarland shares a story about the chaotic financial management of Fyre Festival and his daily struggle to raise money.

"We had a budget for $10 million for the festival. I didn't have $10 million, but I thought I could reasonably raise it just off the brand we were building. We ended up spending way more than that.

It got to the point where I would go to sleep with no money in the bank, wake up and know that day I had to raise a certain dollar amount just to survive. Some days it was $50,000, some days it was $4 million. I'd wake up at 9 AM and know I had until 2 PM to get X dollars in the bank to rewire it out before the day ended.

We ended up raising 26 or 27 million, but we were making money from other sources too - selling tickets, getting sponsors, Magnesis was making money, I was doing consulting jobs. Over that 6-month period, we probably spent closer to $40 million. Meanwhile, we sold just under 6,000 tickets, with median ticket prices around $1,200-1,500, generating only about $10 million in sales."