Aaron Grech July 14th, 2018 - 1:09 AM
The Bay Area caught Fyre this weekend after another music festival was cancelled in Antioch, California amid allegations of fraud. According to Rolling Stone, the now-cancelled XO Music Festival raised several red flags, including a name change (the fest was originally billed as the XOXO Music Festival), claiming false sponsors and the arrest of the festival promoter Sami Habib over a high-end real-estate scam.
According to the festival’s promoters, XO Music Festival was supposed to take place from July 13 to July 15, and feature hundreds of artists including Ludacris, The Sugarhill Gang, Bone Thugs N’ Harmony and T.I. In addition, they claimed to host a foam pit, color arena, an indoor skating rink and an “interactive bounce arena,” that was never specified. Tickets for the event ranged from $375 to $2,495.
In the days approaching the festival however, many musicians who were scheduled to perform suddenly dropped out, according to the local CBS SF Bay Area affiliate. Artists cited missing or incomplete payments and a general lack of preparation in the days leading up to the event.
“I’ve played a lot of festivals. I’ve played the Gathering of the Juggalos many years and it takes them about a week to set up for something like that,” Mario Delgado, a horrorcore rapper told local reporters. “We’re here and there’s no trailers or staff. There’s still garbage over here … nothing is set up.”
After reports of the festival organizer being uncommunicative began to circulate, the organizers became combative. “Regardless of all the fake media, we are still planning our festival. The media is trying to cause issues for us for no apparent reason,” the festival organizers stated in a now-deleted Instagram post.
“Things didn’t add up. It was fraud from the start,” Jim Hudson of Country Music Management, who originally booked Madison Hudson for the festival, told Rolling Stone. “I’m a retired cop and I try to do a bit of background on people before booking Madison, and it’s been nonstop issues, nonstop red flags.”
The XO Festival Organizer betters didn’t fare any better with the artist cancellations, claiming that they were the ones who cancelled those artists instead, on Twitter.
Honestly everything is perfect. These few artists that we canceled today from the festival were offered to us by an agency in NY. When we found out that they didn’t have the rights to them we decided to cancel them and let our fans know. That’s all. Thank you
— XO Music Festival (@XOMusicFestival) July 10, 2018
After further media reports surfaced, the organizers officially declared that the event was cancelled in an email obtained by the Rolling Stone, citing poor ticket sales and negative press, before claiming that they would contact their legal team regarding the latter issue.
Habib’s allegation’s of real-estate scams also occurred across the Bay Area; he is accused of leasing multiple properties under fake names, never paying rent and causing over $120,000 worth of damage to various properties.
This event has drawn comparisons to the Fyre Festival, which was abruptly cancelled in 2017 due to similar allegations of mismanagement. Fyre Festival Organizers were hit with over $100 million worth of lawsuits, while the festival’s founder Billy McFarland faced over 40 years in prison due to wire fraud.
