Making official its anticipated push to take on industry giant ESPN, Comcast Corp. struck a nearly $2 billion rights deal with the National Hockey League and said it plans to relaunch its sports network Versus in a bid to transform the network into a top destination for sports fans and advertisers.

In the first big-ticket deal in a likely skirmish among major media companies for sports rights, Comcast beat out ESPN to land exclusive national rights to pro hockey for the next decade. The two rivals, as well as Time Warner Inc.'s Turner and Fox, a division of News Corp. , are also vying for the rights to Pac-12 college sports and the next four Olympic Games. (News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.)

The renewal is part of an aggressive push by NBCUniversal since it was taken over by Comcast earlier this year to secure top-tier sports rights and use them to feed both its broadcast and cable channels. It also comes as NBCUniversal has gained access to subscription fees from Versus and other cable-sports channels that Comcast contributed to the company.

"You don't know how much fun it is to finally touch subscription fees," said NBCU Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, who is in charge of sports programming and operations for the Comcast unit and led NBC Sports when General Electric Co. owned it for more than two decades.

"The most important thing here is the exclusivity," Mr. Ebersol said of the hockey deal. He said that NBCUniversal channels will air more regular-season and playoff games and that the deal includes rights to online-video streaming of NHL games.