I think in the modern world the amount of $ 14.5 billion is simply ridiculous on the scale of almost any country, and as you know Japan is one of the most highly developed countries. I doubt that this profit outweighed the risk of spreading covid that the country received during the Olympics.
But their effort of completing this event is highly commendable despite of the odds they encountered due to the pandemic. Just be glad that they made it and offered the athletes and the community that we all deserved during these challenging times. Yes, there were so many controversies but they stood their ground and completed this event during these turmoil times.
As discussed in the above article, construction industry, specifically benefited from this event. The National stadium and other venues built costing them billions of dollars can still be used for other future events. So for me, that's not a loss at all. They can easily recover the amount used in the next few years of using those venues.
Undoubtedly, Japan's merit is great (at least in that they helped to ensure the continuity of the Olympiads, although the idea of abandoning the 2020 Olympics had great support), but my point of view was that it was wrong to talk about such a small amount as an important factor.
Such huge expenses for conducting the Olympics would mean that in the future only the super-rich nations would be able to bid for hosting. One perfect example is Qatar hosting the FIFA World Cup next year. At least in case of Japan, we know that the money was not stolen and was spent on building the infrastructure. That is not always the case. Remember Sochi 2014? It cost the Russian tax payer around $51 billion and a large part of that money was stolen by the oligarchs. The Fisht stadium cost $665 million, and it was 14 times more than the original estimate.
I remember very well the Olympics in Sochi (I myself am from Russia) and I saw all this chaos that was happening here with my own eyes. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that any winter Olympiad is unprofitable, therefore, such an event is really only available for rich countries, however, this does not forgive the theft and madness that is happening in the petrocracies during such events.