It seems to be a good pattern, especially with things like scores, when we're on a slow connection.

If you are on the article with a slow connection, you might just assume you aren't going to get the scores / matches. If a reader is looking for scores and we say, "hang on a couple o' seconds - scores are coming" they might wait instead of going down the page and missing it completely.

If they weren't looking for them, they'll just scroll through as usual.