I'll admit, I'm a XYfag. I was one of the guys that threw a tantrum and made the infamous meme to dislike TV Tokyo's youtube page and boycott Pokemon SM anime when Greninja lost.

With that aside, I believe the Kalos League was a mistake for the series. The writers should've had Ash lose in the Semi-Finals. It would've been more accepted that Ash lose to Sawyer than Alain. People would take it as a victory and say > well, at least he got to the Semi-Final. He's improving! Maybe in SM he can make it to the finals
The writers wrote themselves into a corner and overdeveloped Ash winning the Kalos league. I think the reason a lot of us XY(Z)fags were so mad was because of that clickbait title from TVTokyo >"Kalos League Victory! Satoshi's Ultimate Match!!"
If the TVTokyo hadn't made that title and made it into a 2 part episode I think a lot of casualfags and Xyfags wouldn't have threw that tantrum and just boycotted the SM anime. That final battle between Ash and Alain doomed the SM anime. As an XYfag, I hope they don't write Ash like he was in XY again because the same thing will happen again.