It is the thread we have been using for live comments during Juve games. The idea, as Geof said, is to keep the match thread from becoming ridiculously large and strictly for discussion without the several pages of comments that are written during the game.
Personally, I'd prefer the LIVE thread .. so we could forget all THE GOOOOOOAAAAAAALs and the IL CAPITANOOOOOOOOs .. and for some reason I feel that no one reads the actual posts, posts with opinions and what would matter later on ..
Seriously though, that's true, this system is very good. It was terribly irritating to scroll through 10 pages of "goooooal", "forza juveeee" and crap before. This is much, much better.