Exeter confirmed last week that a takeover offer is on the table for club.
Whether they were tuning in from the United States or, as in the case of Black Knight board member Ryan Caswell, at Sandy Park in person, their prospective new owners were served up a fantastic advert of what the league can be.
The Chiefs were on the losing side – Fin Smith dancing around England team-mate Immanuel Feyi -Waboso on the final play of the game for the winning score – but a superb toe-to-toe contest in front of a sun-bathed, 12,000-strong crowd was prime sporting 'product'.
Henry Pollock unveiled a new try celebration, lobbing the ball in the air before 'shooting' it down with a mimed rifle. Number eight Callum Chick showed a fine bit of slipper, landing a 50:22. Saints director of rugby Phil Dowson seemed to motion to ask the home fans to find the knock-on in Smith's game-winning score after the visitors had had an earlier try ruled out.
Tom Litchfield's performance at outside centre will give Dowson more reason to smile.
The 24-year-old made the most metres of any of the Saints backline in their win over Saracens at Tottenham Stadium last time out in the league and was a muscular, intelligent presence once again.
The result, combined with Bristol's win over Gloucester on Friday night, adds some much-needed intrigue to the top-four conundrum.
Northampton sit top of the pile still, but the fixture list will test their grip on the summit.
They host second-placed Bath next (albeit the visitors seem set to rest some stars with a looming Champions Cup semi-final against Bordeaux-Begles), before travelling to in-form Leicester and then hosting Bristol.
Ellis Genge and Afolabi Fasogbon brought the rumble once again at Ashton Gate.
Their front-row dust-up was a brilliant subplot in last season's corresponding fixture, with Under-20 World Cup-winning Fasogbon getting under Genge's skin at scrum-time and giving the England and Bristol keystone a cheeky, cheery wave off the pitch when he was replaced early in Gloucester's 44-41 win.
Friday night's rematch went the way of the older man however.
Genge went looking for Fasogbon after Bristol won a scrum penalty, shouting the odds. As the teams trooped off at half-time, the pair were at the heart of a sudden tunnel tussle.
And when Fasogbon was replaced a couple of minutes before Genge, the Ashton Gate crowd waved him on his way.
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't take it personally a few years back when he waved at me when I was walking off the pitch," Genge said on TNT Sports.
"I'm sometimes tarnished as a hothead, but I think the animosity and violence in rugby is what people crave and we should embody it, not shy away from it.
"He is a young talent and I'm sure he will have me again at some point, but I am buzzing with our tight five. We won that battle."
With Will Stuart and Trevor Davison recovering from Achilles tendon and knee injuries respectively, England's tight-head options behind Joe Heyes are a little sparse for England's summer fixtures against South Africa, Fiji and Argentina.
Genge's Bristol team-mate George Kloska, picked to start at three ahead of Fasogbon for England A earlier this year, might have something to say about that too though.
Billy Searle was lining up a gimme conversion after Gabriel Hamer-Webb had strolled in for an alarmingly easy fourth try of the afternoon, when some late intrigue was injected into the final quarter of Leicester's 62-3 win over Newcastle.