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To date, there has never been a Fyre Music Festival. Not actually. I use the “Music Festivals” tag here wryly. There’s been plenty of hype in the name of “Fyre.” There’s been crimes against housing and a subsequent prison sentence for fraud. And there’s been a repeat of the whole cycle, with the sole exception that the second iteration stopped short of people traveling to the venue under false pretenses. But at no point has Fyre Festival ever delivered on the promise of music. Or fun. Or plumbing and food. So naturally, Fyre founder Billy McFarland’s next great idea was… to sell off the “Fyre” brand name and copyrights to the highest bidder. I sh-t you not. The original title of this post was supposed to be “Billy McFarland is trying to sell the Fyre Festival brand on eBay,” but, regrettably, some dolt actually bought the damn thing. For $245,300!! Who keeps throwing money at this convicted con artist?! I’m starting to see how we wound up with a second term of President Snake Oil Salesman.

Billy McFarland has officially auctioned off the intellectual property, trademarks, and assets for Fyre Festival on eBay for a sum of $245,300.

The sale arrives after McFarland’s purported seven-figure deal to sell Fyre Fest apparently fell through earlier this month; in response, the ‘contrepreneur’ (con man + entrepreneur) announced he’d be auctioning off the brand via eBay, with the starting bid being one cent.

The winner will receive control of the Fyre Fest brand name, trademarks and intellectual property, social media accounts, marketing materials, and domain names. Plus, they’ll obtain documentary footage, the option for a Caribbean festival location (which McFarland announced prior to the sale), and email and SMS lists. Some of the Fyre IP had already been sold to documentarian Shawn Rech, who plans to use the name for a new music-focused subscription video-on-demand platform.

“Whoever owns the Fyre brand will have an attention engine to launch festivals, do merch collabs, do insane pop-ups, run livestreams, or build a media brand,” McFarland said when announcing the sale last week.

As for McFarland, he’s unlikely to pocket any of the $250,000 for himself, as he still owes more than $20 million in restitution to the original Fyre Festival investors, as well as millions in back taxes.

[From Consequence of Sound]

I’m really struggling with one, on so many fronts, but I’ll try to break it down. Starting with “contrepreneur.” Look, I love a clever portmanteau. But in this case it falls flat, because Billy McFarland has not once in eight years of this mishegas brought any form of entrepreneurship to the table. Let’s just leave it at “con.” Similarly, I strongly take issue with the use of the term “intellectual property” when referring to Fyre Festival. Show me the intelligence, and I’ll withdraw my objection. And speaking of legal terms and inevitable lawsuits, did you catch the bit about this being the second person Billy has sold Fyre rights to? Of course there’s the possibility that Billy had his lawyers draw up very clear definitions of the rights each buyer has just purchased. HaHaHaHa, yes, that one was just for laughs!

Congratulations, I guess, to documentarian Shawn Rech and anonymous eBay bidder for your respective… gains? And well played, Billy, making a big sale that took off 1.25% of your total debt. So who now owns the right to go to jail for Fyre crimes?

Photos credit: RC/Backgrid, Getty and via YouTube, eBay and Instagram