Fyre Festival promo video island for sale for $11.8 million
By Megan Cerullo
/ MoneyWatch
The island featured in the promotional video for the failed Fyre Festival — that showed Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner and other A-listers frolicking on pristine beaches — is on the market for a cool $11.8 million.
The private island, called Saddleback Cay in Exuma, Bahamas, boasts seven beaches, a main house, and several stone cottages and shacks, according to listing agent John Christie. "It's basically an undeveloped island," he told CBS MoneyWatch.
The mostly empty retreat has been on and off the market for years, he said, and is listed at a lower price than its earlier high of around $14 million. There's been plenty of interest in the island, particularly given the recent price drop, despite minimal efforts to promote the listing.
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"It's not being aggressively marketed. We have it on our website, but it's not being pushed out aggressively, because it's just the Bahamian, kind of laid back way," Christie said.
Fyre Festival co-founder Billy McFarland in 2017 recruited top models and Instagram influencers to promote the doomed music festival, which was billed as an exclusive event on a remote and private island. Tickets to the festival, which claimed to showcase "the best in food, art, music and adventure," had cost as much as $400,000.
In reality, attendees arrived at the event on Great Exuma, 90 miles north of Saddleback Cay, to cancelled performances, cold cheese sandwiches and less-than luxurious accommodations.
The scandal spawned a pair of documentaries from Netflix and Hulu and McFarland is currently serving a six-year prison sentence for defrauding investors and attendees. His partner, rapper Ja Rule, insists he, too, was "hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked, led astray."
McFarland also falsely claimed in the promo video that the event would take place on an island once-owned by Pablo Escobar. Neither Saddleback Cay nor Great Exuma were ever owned by the late drug lord.
Christie, the listing agent, emphasized that the island remains up for grabs. "We have someone willing to pay a decent price right now, they are in negotiations but it's very much on the market. Selling an island is a little more difficult. Until it's done, it's not done."
First published on July 4, 2019 / 8:33 PM
© 2019 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
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