FLOP No. 38 – Florida Swampland Spectacle: Ponzi, Hype & the Real Estate Collapse (1920s)
GatheringPoint.new: The 50 Biggest Flops in Event History
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The Promise: Florida promised paradise. Developers promised beachfront land for pennies. Events, tours, and press packages flooded in.
What Happened: The land was often underwater or nonexistent. Hurricanes struck. The boom collapsed. Scams unraveled. Ponzi himself was involved in one of the scams.
What Failed: Staging outran soil testing. Press releases ignored physics.
What We Learned: If you hype the view but hide the waterline, you’re selling fiction.
What an Event Pro Would’ve Advised: Survey the land. Run ethics checks. And don’t host ribbon-cuttings for ghost plots.
