They often put live sport on popup channels when there is no live sport on the main channels too. Leads me to believe it's done deliberately, particularly for tournaments like football World Cup or euros etc. They'd rather use popup channels to get people to sign up to their satellite service rather than fanpass. The huge price hike of fanpass to $100 for a month pass seems to back that up too.
To me, fanpass seemed like a tool they were using to try get the Vodafone merger across the line. "See we are doing digital/online stuff" - the second that merger was declined, that was when they hiked the price of fanpass up.
Or I could just be cynical.