Pokemon desperately needs something to do with the actual Pokemon that isn't battling. We have a ton of features added (and removed) over the years that if smushed together could probably create a form of contents people would actually really get into.
I personally fucking loved contests and Ribbon Mastered multiple Pokemon in RSE and ORAS, but I know a lot of people glossed over them. Considering we can now walk and run around with every single Pokemon in-game, there's no reason why Contests can't come back in a new and robust way outside of the fact that GF is just fucking lazy and is more than content with telling people to just do online if they want content.
