"The only opportunity for us to make money is from activities other than football"

As the NFL season kicks off, a different team is in the spotlight: the Oakland Raiders. An initiative is underway to move the Raiders to Las Vegas, if the NFL approves it.

The move depends on the completion of a new $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat stadium there; it would be the most expensive NFL stadium ever built - MetLife Stadium in New Jersey cost $1.6 billion and Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara cost $1.3 billion. And the man behind that costly project is Las Vegas Sands (LVS) CEO Sheldon Adelson.

The 83-year-old casino mogul, who ranked No. 15 on last year’s Forbes 400 list with $30 billion in net worth, spoke exclusively to Yahoo Finance by phone to discuss his plan.

Raiders owner Mark Davis has committed to moving the team, and he has pledged $500 million to the stadium project, which includes a $200 million NFL loan and the likely sale of Raiders personal seat licenses (PSLs). Adelson will contribute $650 million of his own money to the project, and has brought on developer Majestic Realty. The final piece would be $750 million in public funding, raised by raising the hotel room tax in Clark County, Nev., by less than 1% - $750 million from the county plus $650 million from Adelson plus $500 million from the Raiders brings the total to $1.9 billion; that price tag could still go higher.

The project is not without controversy.

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The glitzy stadium plan, complete with retractable roof, looks exorbitant to critics like the local Culinary Union, which argued the NFL and Adelson ought to pay for it on their own

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Clark County Commissioner Christina Giunchigliani (D) also opposes the stadium. “There has never been,” she said, “a public-private partnership that has built a stadium that has been a good investment for the public.”

Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Convention Center is seeking expansion, which would also require an increase in Clark County hotel room tax.

Jim Murren, CEO of MGM Resorts, said in January, “We do not support room taxes being diverted to a stadium when we have this just tremendous, tremendous, dire need at our convention center… Let’s go to the must-haves before we go to the nice-to-haves.”

But in a presentation last month to the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee (SNTIC), Sands president Rob Goldstein, present on behalf of the Adelson family (LVS, the company, is not involved in the financing), was unyielding.

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Not to be difficult, but we’re not negotiable. If we can’t get $750 [million], we respectfully thank you but we’re going to move on, he told the committee

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And Adelson himself is not without controversy. Last year the billionaire purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper. He has been the subject of criticism for his takeover of the paper and his reported attempts to use the paper’s editorial staff to aid in the stadium project.

In two hours of conversation with Yahoo Finance, Adelson addressed that criticism, and answered 

Read the full transcript of the conversation that was featured by Yahoo Finance.