Tech mogul Billy McFarland, who partnered with Ja Rule on the disastrous Fyre Festival, is blaming the chaotic conditions on a freak storm — and has already started planning next year’s event, The Post has learned.
The 25-year-old entrepreneur decided to scrap next week’s performances on Friday and “postpone” the Bahamas beach extravaganza until 2018, when he hopes to bring the music-related mayhem to American shores.
“We are hoping for a large scale festival next year,” McFarland told The Post.
He added that it would be held on a beach in the US and guests would be admitted for free, with a dollar donation being given to the Bahamian Red Cross for each attendee.
“It’s no exaggeration to say this is the worst day of my life,” McFarland explained. “We need to take things in order and make sure everything is alright and then take care of next year and make sure its better.”
Still neck deep in Thursday’s debacle, the young New Jersey native insisted that many of the things posted on social media about the calamitous Fyre Festival were either exaggerated or simply not true.
“A majority of the photos are from people not actually at the festival,” he said, citing a picture of a sad-looking cheese sandwich in a Styrofoam container.
“We had plenty of food and water on the festival site. Thousands of water bottles, we gave it out free at all times,” McFarland recalled. “We had a big kitchen. That was one of the kitchen staff’s food that someone took and uploaded.”
He added that festivalgoers were informed of the disaster relief-like tents that they’d be forced to stay in long before they arrived.
“We sent guest pictures of the tents and told them if they weren’t happy we would refund them,” McFarland said.
Explaining what ultimately went wrong, he described how a “bad storm” moved into the region — busting water pipes and soaking “half of the tents” on site.
“We did our best to fix the water and tents as guests were arriving which was a tough task for us,” McFarland said. “We took a step back and didn’t want to risk any unforeseen safety issues and it was better to postpone ’til next year.”
The Bucknell dropout also blamed the festival’s poor conditions and cancellation of flights on the weather, as well.
“The overall capacity [of the island] was not the problem, it was more of the timing,” McFarland said.
In response to claims that A-listers had been called prior to the event and urged not to come, McFarland said organizers phoned everyone who had a ticket late Thursday and told them all to stay away.
“We needed more man power, we needed more experience,” he said. “We needed more staff to help support. We hired 300 staff for the event and the staff to guest attendee ratio was higher than recommended, but we wish we had hired more. It was a learning process for us.”
McFarland told The Post his main concern now is getting everyone home safe and preparing for next year.
“We’re doing our best to make it right,” he said.
Additional reporting by Chris Perez