MARCH | COVER FEATURE
How the Netflix-famous festival
should’ve worked out…
Words: Tom Hall
F
yre Festival is the talk of office
water coolers nationwide thanks
to Netflix and Hulu’s respective
documentaries (Fyre: The Greatest
Party that Never Happened and Fyre
Fraud) documenting the event’s
cringe-inducing collapse.
The event was billed as the sort of
party that would make even Kanye
West question if he’d overdone the
braggadocio. Models, private jets,
and world-famous artists were to
descend on a tropical island to create
the most ‘Gram-worthy backdrop
the world had ever seen.
The impending implosion of
Fyre Festival touches on both
contemporary and age old aspects
of the event lifecycle. This means
#eventprofs are perfectly placed to
dissect when, where and why Fyre
Festival got it so wrong.
The concept
“This will be the greatest gathering
of influencers the world has ever
seen,” Fyre Festival founder Billy
McFarland
The scale of the mayhem at
Fyre Festival has caused some
event experts to reach for literary
allusions.
Amplify founder Jonathan
Emmins references Philip Larkin’s
poem Ambulances to explain our
industry’s conflicted
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