Is Seth MacFarlane related to Billy McFarland? Family Guy star trends as Fyre Fest founder announces reboot of failed festival

Billy McFarland has announced that Fyre Festival is making a comeback in 2025, after its disastrous first attempt in 2017, which saw the founder imprisoned for multiple counts of fraud. In a September 9 interview with NBC News, McFarland confirmed that Fyre Festival II will take place on a private island in Mexico on April 25, 2025.

“We have the chance to embrace this storm and really steer our ship into all the chaos that has happened, and if it’s done well, I think Fyre has a chance to be this annual festival that really takes over the festival industry,” said McFarland.

After the news of the festival's renewal spread on social media, many people speculated if the American businessman was related to Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, causing the latter to trend online. However, the two are not related and share no family.

These speculations have circulated on social media since the Fyre Festival controversy in 2017 and Billy McFarland's subsequent arrest and incarceration in 2018. Many online pointed out that the two shared a similar last name and resembled each other, wondering if they were brothers. There are also several Reddit threads dedicated to this topic.

However, the similarities end there, with no evidence to prove that the two are related. Neither Seth MacFarlane nor Billy McFarland have addressed the rumors of their familial ties.

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Billy McFarland has been working on Fyre Festival II for over a year

The controversy surrounding the 2017 Fyre Festival has been widely discussed online, with a Netflix documentary detailing what went wrong. Billy McFarland, the American businessman behind the highly anticipated music festival, was only in his mid-twenties when he came up with the idea of a luxury music festival that boasted an extravagant experience for its attendees.

The festival, promoted by celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid, also promised a musical lineup including Blink-182, Migos, Pusha T, and Tyga, among others. However, when the attendees landed in the Bahamas for the event, they were greeted with refuge tents and packaged cheese sandwiches.

The catastrophe was depicted in Netflix's 2019 documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. On June 30, 2017, Billy McFarland was arrested for charges of fraud regarding the festival and was sentenced to six years in October 2018. However, he was released in 2022 after serving four years.

In April 2023, Billy McFarland announced that Fyre Festival II would be held in 2025. Later in August last year, he took to TikTok to reveal that the first 100 tickets for the festival were sold out for $499, despite the location and date not being announced.

In the new interview with NBC News, McFarland theorized that people would want to go to a second Fyre Festival out of curiosity.

“I think there’s a large number of people who want to go to Fyre II because they’re unsure of the outcome, and they would like to have a front-row seat no matter what happens. Thankfully, we have good partners who will make sure they’re safe and obviously make sure things work out,” he said.

Billy McFarland added that he hired a festival production company to ensure Fyre Festival II had smooth sailings. With a second iteration of the festival, McFarland hopes to deliver an experience that transcends beyond a normal music festival. The businessman wants to focus on different experiences, stating:

“It’s not about 10,000 people staring at a stage with their hands in the air. It’s about getting on a plane with six people — two might be your friends, three might be people you met that morning — and going and exploring an island or a beach or a reef that you didn’t even know existed until you got in the airplane.”

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Fyre Festival II will reportedly run from April 25 to 28, 2025, on a private island off Mexico. Tickets are now available for purchase on the Fyre Festival II website (fyrefestival2.com).