Fyre Festival; we attempt to extract key info from the ludicrous pitch deck
It’s pretty hard to not look away from the continuing fallout from 2017’s infamous Fyre Festival.
The details of the festival have become etched into modern pop-culture folklore.
Touted as a “luxury music festival”, that was supposed to be headlined by Blink 182 and Major Lazer, descended into a Lord of the Flies-styled mele, with organiser Billy McFarland jailed, lawsuit after lawsuit lining up for the organisers…. and four in five punters saying they would gladly do it again, given how historically infamous it became.
The festival has become the subject of multiple documentaries and set a new low for festivals gone wrong…even by Aussie hiphop standards.
Check out the trailer for Netflix’s Fyre Fest doco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8lNWj5Atu0
With the conversation around what happened and what went wrong continuing to heat up, the timing couldn’t be better for the pitch deck for the festival to be revealed.
A pitch deck is a presentation for investors or supporters to throw their weight behind a business or concept, essentially trying to convince the influential of why an idea is set to succeed- so it makes pretty interesting reading when it comes to something as ill-fated as the Fyre Festival.
So without further ado, here are some key pieces of info from the official Fyre Festival pitch deck (that we could extract in between all the pictures of Victoria Secret models posing on the beach).
1) The Vision: Fyre was meant to be more than just a festival
While Fyre Festival will forever be remembered as one of the worst festivals to ever occur, the vision of ‘Fyre’ was always meant to be so much more. The pitch proclaims that the “live music industry is broken” and “Accessing talent is a mystifying, inefficient, and inconsistent process.” As a result, the concept behind Fyre was to be a “global marketplace” where bands could be booked efficiently, as well as providing an easy platform to promote across social media.
Too bad even our own homegrown festivals have been able to organically swell without the need of millions of dollars and media influencers throwing their weight behind it.
2) World Conquering: Fyre was going to be a travelling glamping fest
“The cultural experience of a decade” is how the festival has described its set up, aiming to convert “untouched lands”, with each instalment of the festival aiming to be “a major cultural event to bring awareness, visitors and livelihood to the land.” Each year was to reference a different element, with the one-time instalment focused around the ‘water’ element; an ironic theme given a massive storm the night before the festival wiped out much of the campsite, meaning attendees who paid thousands of dollars found disaster relief tents greeting them as their accommodation.
The luxurious tents that greeted ticket holders for Fyre Festival
Expectation vs. Reality; the official promo video for the festival
3) The numbers; 400 & 40,000
That’s the number of social media influencers that the festival engaged to promote the event to the white collar kids of the US and the world, and how many guests they hoped would attend.
The likes of Kendall Jenner, Hailey Baldwin and Marcus Butler were just some of the social media superstars that the pitch deck threw onto their list of influencers who they claimed could bring up to 40,000 guests to the event. These people were listed as “potential brand partners” who would be in attendance at the event, with a collective reach of nearly half a billion people through social media networks.
Jenner herself was perhaps unfairly targeted by social media users for her promotion of the event – but perhaps fairly found herself alongside her fellow influencers having to reveal how much she was paid for the promotion in legal proceedings.
Jenner’s post wasn’t taken to well by fans in the wake of the disaster
4) Obscene amounts of flex
The Fyre Festival pitch might just be the most insecure piece of advertising we’ve ever seen when it comes to numbers.
Don’t have a proper business model to assure that you are a worthy investment and can turn a profit despite booking some of the biggest acts in the world and paying influencers in excess of a quarter-of-a-million for promo? Just tell them that you have a cool $25 million to pay big shot industry cronies.
Remind them that all the people involved in your business have sold 60 million records worldwide – even though your talking about pulling off a music festival that involves catering, accommodation and basic safety.
But maybe play down the fact that the festival site was $8.4 million in market value- no financial risk there.
Check out where all those millions went in this fan-shot vlog below
5) Rumi quotes because woke
“Seek those who light your flames” finishes the pitch. Shut up and take our money!
Check out the thoughts of an ill-fated Fyre Festival attendee here, courtesy of The Guardian.
Read more about the pitch deck here
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.