WPGM Reviews: The Lottery Winners Live At O2 Institute Birmingham

The Lottery Winners rounded out the final night of their 2025 tour at the O2 Institute in Birmingham to, what felt like, a sold out crowd and a performance that firmly cements the group as one of the best, most promising, up and coming British indie pop/rock bands.

The first support act of the night was from the female fronted, midlands based, Eighty Eight Miles – whose name derives from Back To The Future – performed a short set filled with their own songs before finishing extremely strongly with a cover of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac and their own ‘Sexy Song’.

The Covasettes were second up, with their debut album releasing later this year the band played a mixture of already released singles such as “Rebound”, “Be Mine”, “Twit Twoo” and “Top Drawer”, and a few sneak peek songs from their upcoming album.

The Manchester based bands pure charisma really shone through their set as they had many a funny ad-lib whilst also creating a fake encore for their final song to get the crowd riled up and serve as a prelude to the antics of Lottery Winners.

Then the Lottery Winners took to the stage. The band came bounding out to the instrumentals of Let Me Entertain You – which wasn’t the end of the Robbie Williams references for the evening. First up was a trio of songs consisting of “Worry”, “21” and “Superpower” with a small impromptu cover of “Never Gonna Give You Up” – which stemmed from the band supporting Rick Astley at the same venue last year.

Following on from this, the band played “Sertraline” and “You Again” before performing a cover of Robbie Williams’ “Angels” – a new addition to the set list ever since lead singer Thom Rylance had a phone-call with the man himself. Shortly after this was another cover, this time acoustic, of Billy Bragg’s “A New England” which Thom and Rob performed back in their high school days.

Following this brief acoustic respite, they sang “UFO” whilst being lit up by the crowd’s phone lights as Thom delivered an emotional thank you to all the fans for coming out to the final night of tour. After this emotional beat, there was a momentary pause to plug their VIP lanyards on sale at the venue, to drive home the importance of physical media in the battle for entering the UK sales charts over just streaming.

Shortly after this was my personal highlight of the evening. Earlier in the show, the band noticed a fan’s sign asking to play the guitar for “Letter To Myself” which was initially dismissed, but as the time came, they made good on the sign and brought 15 year old Ben onto the stage to perform the song.

And to his credit, he hit every note perfectly on that guitar, something which elated the band, Ben’s family and surely everyone in the venue at that point. It was a joyous moment to watch and really cemented the Lottery Winners as one of the best live bands.

It was always going to be hard to top this but during the encore, the Covasettes, the crew and the whole audience were dancing to their upcoming Macarena/Saturday Night inspired dance instruction song “Turn Around” which was truly a sight to behold. To end the night, there was of course a final play of “Never Gonna Give You Up” to continue the long running joke.

As I’ve mentioned throughout this review – and my previous review of the band at Y Not Festival – The Lottery Winners are steadily and surely gaining ground on being the next best British indie/rock band with their impactful, true to life lyrics, their outstanding live shows and their charismatic lead man Thom, all playing key parts in maelstrom of sure fire success.

If you get the chance to see this band, I implore you to jump at the opportunity.

Words and photography by Sam Huntley

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