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LimeWire Acquires Fyre Festival Brand, Plans to Reignite its Infamous Legacy
In a move that’s equal parts wild and nostalgic, LimeWire — once the infamous peer-to-peer music-sharing platform — has officially bought the rights to the Fyre Festival brand for $245,000. The deal, sealed via an eBay auction, positions LimeWire to reclaim one of the most notorious names in festival history, not by re-creating past disasters, but by re-imagining what Fyre could have been.
🔥 Big news: LimeWire has officially acquired @fyrefestival. What could possibly go wrong? 🧵 pic.twitter.com/6Ub4xrfSxT
— LimeWire (@limewire) September 16, 2025
The original Fyre Festival, launched by Billy McFarland in 2017, promised luxury villas, gourmet food, and headline acts — but delivered disaster: stranded attendees, makeshift accommodations, and memes that became cultural shorthand for hype gone wrong. After legal fallout and failed revival attempts, McFarland decided to sell the intellectual property of Fyre earlier this year through an auction.
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LimeWire plans to “bring the brand and the meme back to life” — carefully. According to CEO Julian Zehetmayr, the goal isn’t to host another music festival (at least not yet), but to use the freshly acquired Fyre identity as a platform for real-world experiences, community moments, and cultural content that leans into its viral reputation, without repeating past mistakes like cheese sandwiches.
The purchase wasn’t uncontested. Among bidders was Maximum Effort, the creative agency co-founded by actor Ryan Reynolds. Though Maximum Effort didn’t win, they’ve since licensed Fyre branding for a Visa ad on board with LimeWire’s plans. For LimeWire, this acquisition fits with a path of reinvention: once shut down in 2010 after legal battles over piracy, it relaunched in 2022 as a Web3-powered content sharing and token ecosystem.
While details are still being teased, LimeWire has already opened a waitlist for fans interested in updates, merch, and early access to whatever Fyre’s next chapter becomes. The promise: turning one of the internet’s most infamous fails into something bold, real, and maybe even… redeeming.
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