If Amazon Prime Video was hopeful its maiden foray into rugby coverage would be the main talking point of the weekend’s international Test match action, its thunder was unceremoniously stolen mere hours before its first broadcast.

After Sky Sport’s viewers were spoiled by the unprecedented sight of Argentina beating the All Blacks in the Tri-Nations, a laboured Scotland win over Italy and routine England rout of Georgia in our own mundane jamboree, the Autumn Nations Cup, could never hope to compete.

Worse was to come for the debutant, courtesy of a geography fail. Subscribers in Northern Ireland having difficulty logging in tweeted @AmazonHelp, who replied: “We apologize but upon reviewing your location you’re in Northern Ireland. Rugby Autumn Nations Cup coverage is exclusively available to Prime members based in the UK. We don’t have the rights to other territories.”

The news of Irish reunification was met with references to the “Black Friday Agreement” and doctored pictures of the mural “You are now entering Free Derry” changed to “free delivery”.

Back on screen, “Amazon delivers the rugby,” it told us, the pre-match graphic featuring rampaging and hulking household names carrying brown parcels under their arms instead of oval balls. They looked more likely to splinter any recipient’s front door off its hinges than ring the bell and leave the package on the step as social distancing dictates.

Compared with the paltry £14.46m its retail wing paid in UK corporation tax on revenues of £13.7bn last year, Amazon stumped up a comparatively generous £20m for rights to the tournament and among those benefiting from its largesse at an empty Twickenham were the anchor Gabby Logan and her trio of players-turned-pundits, Bryan Habana, Dylan Hartley and David Flatman. Related to items we were about to view: Jill Douglas in Florence, overseeing Scotland’s laboured win as a prelude to the main event.

While Amazon’s investment represents little more than chump change to the aggressive experts in tax avoidance, it will provide a lifeline for a struggling sport laid low financially by the current plague. But despite monthly subscriptions of £7.99 for Prime Video, sports fans need feel under no obligation to encumber themselves with the additional cost of access to yet another paywall: this one is free to anyone who remembers to cancel the subscription before the end of a 30-day free trial.

In the meantime, affluent rugby followers are invited to absorb half-time adverts for Mercedes, IBM and iPhones, while reaping the benefits of free next-day delivery on any mid-match armchair Christmas shopping they may complete in the next four weeks. As well as their disposable income, the online store gets to harvest their personal details and preferences, while already disadvantaged independent high-street retail outlets remain sidelined and largely powerless to compete during what should be their busiest time of the year.

Much like its coverage of Premier League football last year, a wheeze on which it will embark once again next month, Amazon’s rugby package arrived surprisingly unobtrusively, with a minimum of bells, whistles or general fuss. In terms of pre-match hype, some jovial pre-recorded video conference “banter” conducted by Flatman with a trio of England internationals from their respective hotel rooms was about as hi-tech as things got.

On the field, the installation of cameras and microphones in the goal posts for England’s game was trumpeted, the latter apparently introduced all the better to pick up the pre-watershed effing and jeffing of exhausted Georgians assembled beneath the crossbar following the concession of yet another Jamie George try. As innovations go it was rendered largely redundant, due in no small part to the vanquished visitors being too knackered to speak.

With rumours of an imminent £300m bid from Sky Sports for a competition whose live rights are jointly held by the free-to‑air BBC and ITV, it is considered unlikely Amazon will bid for the Six Nations in the tender process for 2022 onwards. Unlikely but not inconceivable, which means its surprising interest in the Autumn Nations Cup may benefit organisers who have previously resisted putting their product behind a paywall, but out of financial necessity may finally be primed to prioritise revenue over reach.