About an hour before tipoff of the 76ers-Rockets game on Monday night, a young man at the South Philadelphia Turf Club pulled his phone out of his pocket and made a call. “You know,” he told the person on the other line, “you can make sports bets at the Turf Club now.”
Based on the sparse crowd at the Turf Club from about 6:30 p.m. until shortly before the Sixers took the court just a few city blocks away at the Wells Fargo Center, that horse player and his buddy on the other end of the phone weren’t alone in being slow to get the memo. The Turf Club officially opened its sportsbook last Thursday, Jan. 17, following the standard two-day soft launch, becoming the fifth legal brick-and-mortar sports betting venue in Pennsylvania. Getting the word out will be a gradual process.