YourTube/Fyre Festival
A still from the Fire Festival's promotional video.
In the days leading up to the disastrous Fyre Festival - where hundreds of would-be partiers were stranded on an island in the Bahamas without food or shelter after being promised a music festival - Comcast elected not to fund its parent company, Fyre Media, Bloomberg reported, citing an anonymous source.Comcast was interested in funding Fyre, an on-demand booking app for celebrities. But a due diligence review revealed the app itself wasn't technically sophisticated enough to fund, and Fyre failed to turn over financial documents in a timely manner.
Comcast also concluded the company's namesake festival was headed on a disastrous course, and likely wouldn't have a positive outcome, according to Bloomberg. (They were correct).
A former employee told Bloomberg that founder Billy McFarland had previously told employees Comcast invested $20 million in the app company - but a Comcast employee told Bloomberg it never invested anything. Negotiations between between the two did get far enough for Comcast's venture arm to submit a term sheet.
The deal between Comcast and Fyre was called off just days before the doomed festival.