There is a third route between made-up and technical: real stories without any 'novel' or fictive aspects. You are making a serious conflation when you say " Is this any different from the sports fan who talk about old team lineups, why such and such tactic was wrong in a game, why they lost a game because of bad luck/refereeing[?]"

I am saying: yes, it's very different! It's like the difference between discussing Napoleon and discussing Darth Vader. One is not a discussion about a made-up world, but the real world. Instead of speculation about the made-up world, we can examine real facts. Likewise, for real games that actually happened, we can look at real facts.

I also consider lots of made-up stories to be very interesting. On the other hand, I am also interested to an extent in real stories as well, without any creative aspects other than the author's (and scoiety's) interpretation, the order in which events are told, what events are told, etc.

Imaginative realities are certainly interesting - but don't for a minute confuse them for being similar to real events.