star like John Cena, and that's apparent by how well shows move tickets whenever he's involved. Television ratings for Monday Night Raw, Friday Night SmackDown, and even AEW Dynamite can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Ticket sales are what they are, though, especially since it's generally public knowledge how many were purchased and how many were given out for free.
Keeping an eye on the secondary market ahead of pay-per-views and live events is one way to get the temperature of how a show will do in a particular market. For instance, demand for Hell In A Cell tickets on the secondary market spiked when Bray Wyatt teased a potential return to wrestling on Twitter. That didn't materialize, of course, but fans were still treated to an all-time great performance from Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins.
There aren't many wrestlers WWE can simply say will be at an event, and several thousand extra tickets are moved, though. Not even Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar can move the needle in that way, yet Cena is still able to make a real, discernable impact on ticket sales. Dave Meltzer broke Cena's impact down on Raw like this in the most recent edition of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter: "Cena is still the one proven major live ticket mover left. They announced on Raw on 6/6 that Cena would return on the 6/27 Raw in Laredo TX. Over the next six days, tickets for that show went from 3,726 to 5,080 and is now at 5,154."
The July 27 episode of Raw is being touted as Cena's 20th-anniversary show, so interest in that event makes a ton of sense. Meltzer noted that some of those tickets that were sold were to scalpers, but that's still a form of interest in the show. There's no demand for them to capitalize on if there are 2,000 unsold tickets to a show, after all. It's unclear what WWE and Cena have planned for this show, but there's no shortage of threads that they could pull on.
It could be as simple as The Face That Runs The Place getting a promo or two in during the broadcast, but that seems like an underutilization of Cena's return. Roman Reigns took to Facebook to post a cryptic message to Cena, writing "Acknowledge" to go along with the finish to their match at No Mercy in 2017. A bout with Theory, possibly at SummerSlam has been teased by both him and Cena, but recent reports indicate that WWE may have cooled on this possibility. Especially with the likes of Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton injured, it seems likely Cena could find something a bit bigger to sink his teeth into at the Biggest Party Of The Summer.