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Level B1

Fyre Festival

The Luxury Party That Never Happened

In 2017 guests paid up to twelve thousand dollars for a luxury festival in the Bahamas and found wet tents and cheese sandwiches. Olivia tells Sean what happened to the guests, the local workers and the man behind it.

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Key words

These words appear in the episode. In the transcript, hover over or tap a highlighted word to see what it means.

advertnoun
A short film, picture or text that tries to make you buy something.
I saw an advert for a new pizza place on the side of a bus.
luxurynoun
Great comfort that costs a lot of money.
For their anniversary, my parents stayed in a luxury hotel with a pool on the roof.
promiseverb
To say that you will really do something, or that something will really happen.
The shop promised that my new sofa would arrive on Friday.
loannoun
Money that you borrow and must pay back later.
She got a loan from the bank to buy her first car.
cancelverb
To decide that a planned event will not happen.
The school cancelled the museum trip when the bus broke down.
complaintnoun
Something you say or write when you are unhappy with a product or service.
The hotel got a complaint about the noisy air conditioning in room 12.
faintverb
To fall down and stop being awake for a short time, for example because of heat.
A man fainted on the crowded train, so we gave him some water.
fraudnoun
The crime of lying to people to get their money.
The bank called me because someone tried to use my card for fraud.
plead guiltyphrase
To say in court that you did the crime.
The driver pleaded guilty to driving too fast past the school.
sentencenoun
The punishment that a judge gives someone, for example time in prison.
The thief got a sentence of two years for stealing the paintings.
proofnoun
Facts or things that show something is true.
Do you have any proof that you paid the electricity bill?
strandedadjective
Stuck in a place with no way to leave.
The snow closed the airport, and hundreds of travellers were stranded for the night.
savingsnoun
Money that you keep and don't spend, often in a bank.
He used his savings to travel around South America for three months.
postponeverb
To move an event to a later time.
We postponed the barbecue until next weekend because half the family had a cold.

Did you understand?

Choose the correct answer.

1. What did famous models post on Instagram on the twelfth of December 2016?

2. Why did the festival lose the island Norman's Cay?

3. What happened to the first guests who tried to fly back to Miami?

4. What did Billy McFarland do while he was out on bail?

5. What happened to the Fyre brand in July 2025?

Exercise 1

Spot the mistake

Is the key word used correctly? Decide, then check. If it's wrong, the fix appears.

1. The festival was postponed, so the guests had to arrive a week earlier.

2. Sean's big complaint about the cheese sandwich was that it had no pickle.

3. The guests were stranded at the airport because there were too many flights to choose from.

4. Billy fainted his investors with fake numbers about his company.

5. Maryann Rolle used about fifty thousand dollars of her savings to pay her staff.

6. The judge had lots of proof that Ja Rule's posts sold the tickets, so he took him out of the lawsuit.

Exercise 2

Crossword

All the answers are key words from the episode.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Across

  1. 4 The judge said there wasn't enough of this against Ja Rule. (5)
  2. 6 Maryann Rolle used about $50,000 of hers to pay her staff. (7)
  3. 7 VIP guests expected a ___ villa. They got a wet tent. (6)
  4. 8 The festival was really a very expensive one of these for Billy's app. (6)

Down

  1. 1 You borrow it from a bank and pay it back later. (4)
  2. 2 Sean's big one about the sandwich: no pickle! (9)
  3. 3 Billy went to prison for wire ___. (5)
  4. 4 In April 2025, the website did this to Fyre Festival II. (8)
  5. 5 No flight, no food and no way home. The guests at the airport were ___. (8)

Exercise 3

Your turn

Imagine you were a guest at Fyre Festival. Write a short email to the organisers in three or four sentences. Use at least two words from the list.

Your text is saved on this device.

Dear Fyre team, I paid twelve thousand dollars for a luxury villa, and I got a wet tent. The advert promised celebrity chefs, and dinner was a cheese sandwich in a foam box. Then I was stranded at the airport for hours with no water. I want my money back, and I want some pickle too.

Full transcript

Show the transcript
Sean
Twelve thousand dollars. For a tent?
Olivia
A wet tent. It rained that morning.
Sean
And dinner?
Olivia
Two slices of bread and two slices of cheese. In a foam box.
Sean
Honestly, that's a normal lunch in Britain.
Olivia
Sean, they were celebrity chefs.
Sean
This is Aprendos English, level B1. I'm Sean.
Olivia
And I'm Olivia.
Sean
Right, so who was selling twelve thousand dollar tents?
Olivia
Let's start with a picture. It's December 2016, and you open Instagram. Every famous model you follow has posted the same thing.
Sean
What thing?
Olivia
An orange square. Nothing else.
Sean
Just orange?
Olivia
Just orange, with one word under it. Fyre, with a Y.
Sean
Of course it's with a Y.
Olivia
They all went up on the twelfth of December, at the same time. Kendall Jenner and Emily Ratajkowski were two of them.
Sean
And they were paid for this, I assume.
Olivia
Kendall Jenner got two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. For one post.
Sean
For an orange square? I'm in the wrong job.
Olivia
We both are. Then came the video. Supermodels on a beach in the Bahamas, with boats and bright blue water.
Sean
Selling what, exactly?
Olivia
A music festival on a private island. The Fyre Festival, in April 2017.
Sean
And who was behind it?
Olivia
Two men. One was a rapper called Ja Rule…
Sean
…the Ja Rule from the early two thousands?
Olivia
That Ja Rule. The other was a businessman called Billy McFarland. He was twenty-five.
Sean
Twenty-five. At twenty-five, I couldn't organise a picnic.
Olivia
Well, Billy couldn't either. But he was very good at making things sound amazing.
Sean
What was his business?
Olivia
An app, also called Fyre. You could use it to book famous musicians for your party.
Sean
So the festival was an for the app.
Olivia
Pretty much. A very expensive advert.
Sean
And whose island was it?
Olivia
The video said it once belonged to Pablo Escobar.
Sean
Hold on. That wasn't true, actually.
Olivia
Go on then.
Sean
The island was Norman's Cay. In the eighties it belonged to Carlos Lehder. He was a boss in the same drug cartel.
Olivia
So a different drug lord.
Sean
A different one. And after the Escobar story came out, the owners the deal.
Olivia
How do you know all this?
Sean
I watched both documentaries last winter. Twice.
Olivia
Of course you did. Okay, so they lost the island. Where do you think they went?
Sean
Another private island?
Olivia
Nope. An empty piece of land on Great Exuma, the biggest island in the area.
Sean
How empty?
Olivia
Very empty. And by then, people had already bought tickets. Guess the price.
Sean
Hmm... five hundred dollars?
Olivia
That was the cheapest day ticket. The VIP packages were twelve thousand.
Sean
With flights, I hope.
Olivia
With flights and a villa. That was the promise, anyway.
Sean
How many people bought one?
Olivia
About five thousand tickets were sold in total. And there was one more trick.
Sean
That sounds bad.
Olivia
There was going to be no cash at the festival. So guests had to load money onto a wristband before the trip.
Sean
How much did they put on them?
Olivia
About two million dollars, all together.
Sean
And that money sat there safely, waiting for the party…
Olivia
…reports say some of it went to pay Billy's old .
Sean
Oh dear. And the people on Great Exuma had how long to build all this?
Olivia
Not long at all. A whole festival, from nothing.
Sean
I've been to a festival like that. A small one in Somerset, years ago. It rained for three days, and my tent floated across the field.
Olivia
Your tent floated?
Sean
A little. I slept in my car for two nights.
Olivia
Remember that car, because rain is coming…
Sean
…in this story too. Of course it is.
Olivia
The twenty-seventh of April, 2017. Day one. Early that morning, a big storm hits the island.
Sean
And the tents?
Olivia
Open. And the mattresses were outside, in big piles…
Sean
…in the rain.
Olivia
In the rain. Then the first planes land, full of excited guests.
Sean
So they find the villas…
Olivia
…they find tents. White disaster tents, the kind you see after a hurricane.
Sean
Actually, I read those came from a real hurricane. Hurricane Matthew hit the Bahamas a few months before.
Olivia
That's the usual story, yes. People online called them "FEMA tents."
Sean
After the American emergency agency?
Olivia
Yes. Nobody really knows who owned them. They were emergency tents, and now they were wet.
Sean
So no villas at all.
Olivia
None. And then dinner arrived.
Sean
The famous sandwich.
Olivia
The famous sandwich. A guest called Trevor DeHaas took a photo and posted it on Twitter.
Sean
Describe it. Carefully.
Olivia
Two slices of bread and two slices of cheese. Plus a bit of salad, all in a white foam box.
Sean
See, I still think that's fine.
Olivia
Sean!
Sean
It's a cheese sandwich! Half of Britain eats one at their desk every day.
Olivia
Not for twelve thousand dollars!
Sean
Fair. For twelve thousand dollars, I'd want some pickle at least.
Olivia
Pickle. That's your big ?
Sean
It's a serious complaint. So the photo went everywhere?
Olivia
Everywhere, and very fast. But the sandwich has a twist. Later, the local caterer said those sandwiches were for the staff.
Sean
Only for the staff?
Olivia
That's what he said. Trevor said people were handing them to guests. So it's still a bit of a mystery.
Sean
The sandwich mystery. And the music?
Olivia
Most of the acts had cancelled before the weekend.
Sean
So no villas and no music. What did people do?
Olivia
What would you do?
Sean
Go straight back to the airport.
Olivia
That's what they did. And that's where it got really bad.
Sean
Worse than the sandwich?
Olivia
Much worse. The first flight to Miami was supposed to leave at half past one in the morning.
Sean
And it was late.
Olivia
Hours late. Then after sunrise, they cancelled it. And the passengers were locked inside the airport building…
Sean
…wait, locked in?
Olivia
Locked in, with no food or water. And no air conditioning in the Bahamas heat. One passenger wrote online that someone .
Sean
Okay, I'm going to be a bit mean here. These people paid twelve thousand dollars for a party. It's hard to feel very sorry for them.
Olivia
Oh, come on. Nobody should be locked in a hot room.
Sean
I didn't say they should. I just said it's hard.
Olivia
They paid for something that never existed. And I know that feeling, a tiny bit.
Sean
You bought a Fyre ticket?
Olivia
No! When I lived in Spain after college, I paid forty euros for a "beach party." It was a car park with one speaker.
Sean
One speaker.
Olivia
And no sandwiches. So yes, I feel sorry for them.
Sean
Fine. I'll feel a little sorry for them. A little.
Olivia
On the twenty-eighth of April, the festival was cancelled. In the end, everyone got home.
Sean
And Billy? Did he run away?
Olivia
You tell me. Guess.
Sean
He hid on a different island.
Olivia
Wrong. He stayed in New York, and he was arrested on the thirtieth of June, 2017.
Sean
For what, exactly?
Olivia
Wire . He showed investors fake numbers about how much money his company was making.
Sean
How much did they lose?
Olivia
More than twenty-six million dollars. In March 2018, he .
Sean
So then he said sorry and waited quietly for the judge.
Olivia
That's your second guess, and it's wrong again.
Sean
What else could he do? He was waiting for his !
Olivia
While he was out on bail, he started a new business. Selling VIP tickets.
Sean
VIP tickets to what?
Olivia
Big events like the Met Gala and Coachella. And the tickets were fake.
Sean
While he was waiting for a fraud sentence?
Olivia
While he was waiting for a fraud sentence.
Sean
That's almost impressive. Almost.
Olivia
In October 2018, the judge gave him six years in prison. He also had to give up twenty-six million dollars.
Sean
And Ja Rule? What happened to him?
Olivia
He was never charged with a crime. And in 2019, a judge took him out of a big lawsuit from the guests.
Sean
Why?
Olivia
The judge said there wasn't enough …
Sean
…that his posts sold the tickets?
Olivia
Right. Nobody showed that his posts made those people buy tickets. And Ja Rule says Billy fooled him too.
Sean
Hmm. I'm not sure I believe that.
Olivia
Lots of people don't. But that's the court result.
Sean
Can I take over for a minute? Because the documentaries are my favourite part.
Olivia
Go on then, film fan.
Sean
So in January 2019, two documentaries came out. One on Netflix and one on Hulu.
Olivia
In the same week, right?
Sean
Four days apart. Netflix planned theirs for the eighteenth of January…
Olivia
…and Hulu jumped in first?
Sean
On the fourteenth, with no warning at all. And it gets better. One of the companies behind the Netflix film was Jerry Media.
Olivia
Why does that name sound familiar?
Sean
Because Jerry Media did marketing for the festival.
Olivia
Wait. The people who sold the festival helped make the film about the festival?
Sean
They were one of the producers, yes. The Hulu director said that was a problem.
Olivia
And what did the Netflix director say back?
Sean
He said the Hulu team agreed to pay Billy to appear in their film.
Olivia
So even the documentaries had drama.
Sean
Even the documentaries. So which one should people watch?
Olivia
The Netflix one, for one person. Maryann Rolle.
Sean
The restaurant owner.
Olivia
Yes. She had a restaurant at Exuma Point. She fed the workers and the guests.
Sean
Don't tell me. She never got paid.
Olivia
Never. And it's worse than that. She used about fifty thousand dollars of her own to pay her staff.
Sean
Her own savings.
Olivia
Her whole savings. After the film came out, she started a GoFundMe page.
Sean
Did anyone help?
Olivia
It raised more than two hundred thousand dollars. And she said she wanted to share it with other local workers.
Sean
That's the best part of this whole story.
Olivia
It is. But many Bahamian workers who built the site were never paid either.
Sean
So the guests lost a weekend, and the workers lost weeks of pay.
Olivia
Exactly. The Bahamas tourism ministry even said sorry for the whole thing.
Sean
So Billy's in prison. That's the end?
Olivia
Oh, Sean. This is Billy.
Sean
No. He didn't.
Olivia
He got out in 2022. First to a halfway house in March, and then he had to stay at home until September.
Sean
So less than four years.
Olivia
Less than four years. And in 2023, he announced Fyre Festival II.
Sean
You're joking. Who bought a ticket?
Olivia
The first tickets cost four hundred and ninety-nine dollars. He said they sold out.
Sean
Where was it going to be this time?
Olivia
Mexico, on an island called Isla Mujeres. The dates were the thirtieth of May to the second of June, 2025.
Sean
And did anyone in Mexico know about it?
Olivia
Guess.
Sean
Nobody.
Olivia
You're right this time! The website moved it to Playa del Carmen. Then in April 2025, a city official there said something…
Sean
…that they'd never heard of it?
Olivia
Pretty much. There was no record of any festival.
Sean
And the prices this time?
Olivia
From fourteen hundred dollars, up to one point one million for a group package.
Sean
One point one million. With a cheese sandwich?
Olivia
With pickle, probably. Just for you.
Sean
Thank you. So what happened?
Olivia
In mid-April, the website said the festival was .
Sean
Postponed. So it might still happen?
Olivia
That was the idea. Then in July 2025, Billy put the whole Fyre brand on eBay.
Sean
eBay? Like an old bike?
Olivia
Like an old bike. Guess the final price.
Sean
Ten million dollars.
Olivia
Two hundred and forty-five thousand, three hundred.
Sean
Hold on. That's less than Kendall Jenner got for her orange square!
Olivia
Ha, you're right. I didn't even notice that.
Sean
And who bought it?
Olivia
LimeWire. The name from the old music download website. Today it's a different company.
Sean
LimeWire! My family computer got a virus from LimeWire in about 2004.
Olivia
So you've got a history with them.
Sean
A bad history. I'd stay away from that festival.
Olivia
Okay, listeners, here's what I want to know. Imagine Billy announces another festival tomorrow. Would you buy a ticket? Or would you buy one just to see what happens? Drop your answer below.
Sean
And if some parts went too fast, the script of the whole episode is free to download. Look for the PDF link under the video.
Olivia
And if you want a new true story every week, subscribe to Aprendos English.
Olivia
Have a good week!
Sean
You too. I'm off to make a cheese sandwich.
Olivia
With pickle.
Sean
Obviously with pickle.

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