Class Action Over Canceled World OutGames Miami 2017 Evokes Memories of Fyre Festival Disaster

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The World OutGames were promoted as a celebration of sports, culture and human rights to take place over 10 days between May 26 and June 4, 2017. The event was to feature 15,000 athletes converging on Miami from around the world, as well as a global conference on human rights that would feature 50 speakers and a cultural program comprised of more than 100 events. The OutGames, organized by the Miami Beach-Miami LGBT Sports & Cultural League, Inc. and the Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association (GLISA) were indeed positioned as a true Olympic-style spectacle.

According to a new proposed class action lawsuit, however, in March 2017, two months before the OutGames were to kick off, only 2,000 individuals had registered to compete. Despite knowing this, the lawsuit says, organizers continued to promote the games as a “massive global sporting event,” with a spokesperson publicly stating the OutGames would not be canceled. Should an event be canceled, the spokesperson said, an announcement would be made no later than April 1.

On May 26, as competitors flocked to Miami, the breadth of the OutGames was drastically slashed by the defendants—down to one day.

“But the OutGames were actually, in the grand tradition of the notorious Fyre Festival, both a sham and a miserable failure. The representations of the OutGames organizers were lies. None of the defendants had the capacity to host, organize, or oversee the OutGames. Each of [the defendants] knew the OutGames lacked the financial capacity to cause the event to proceed.”

The complaint outright alleges the defendants knew for months that “all of the sporting events except soccer, aquatics, and country western dance,” as well as the opening and closing ceremonies, would be canceled. The global conference on human rights, the case continues, was cut to a single day, and the cultural program was almost entirely cut. Thousands of individuals were saddled with non-refundable plane tickets, hotel reservations and wasted vacation days, the lawsuit claims.

In attempting to explain how the OutGames turned into an ostensible sequel to the Fyre Festival, the plaintiff alleges the defendants simply never paid the $5,000 special event deposit to Miami Beach. The defendants, the case continues, also never submitted proof of insurance or permit applications by the May 12 deadline.

“As of the first day of the event,” case states, “the OutGames did not have a special event permit, site plans for any of the 7 locations the OutGames purported to acquire, or insurance for the event. Each of these was necessary to the OutGames, but could not be procured."