An apparatus is provided in one example embodiment and includes a content player that receives a request for content from an endpoint and evaluates whether a given portion of the content has already been multicasted. If the portion has been multicasted, then the endpoint is connected to a multicast version of the portion of the content, and if the portion has not been previously multicasted then the portion of content is added to a multicast transmission schedule. In more specific embodiments, the content player requests a piece of content from a content source and segments the piece of content into clips to be delivered to one or more endpoints. In still other embodiments, if the portion has not been previously multicasted then the portion of content is sent over a unicast channel.