The system and methods described aid content delivery by providing requested content using a hybrid delivery of unicast and multicast content. A content delivery system receives, from user equipment, a request for content and identifies multicast sources for the content. The content delivery system determines a recent multicast source from the multicast sources, the recent multicast source having begun more recently relative to the other sources. The content delivery system transmits, to the user equipment, an identity of the recent multicast source and provides a beginning portion of the content to the user equipment via a unicast stream.